


When the sun sets, we're both the same

by Fraudgara



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Watcher Entertainment RPF
Genre: Blood and Violence, Bottom Shane Madej, First Time Topping, Frottage, M/M, Marijuana, Murder Husbands, Serial Killers, Shame Madej, Vigilantism, dark humour, light humiliation kink, sort of post-covid, too many movie references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:41:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28063365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fraudgara/pseuds/Fraudgara
Summary: It happened very quickly, and yet not very quickly at all. Shane was paralyzed as the blade part of Ryan’s katana swiped up when he swung it thoughtlessly—drunkenly—and Shane remembered blinking like the scene would change if he opened his eyes again, but the man was still writhing around on the ground with a stripe of glistening red on his throat and Ryan was staring down at him like he’d never seen anything so horrific or gripping.They both stared numbly, intently, until the man’s erratic choking spasms on the cement became a haunting stillness in a pool of his own blood.“Whoops,” Ryan said, the low register of his voice seeming like a shout to Shane in the silence of the night and of the now dead man laying at their feet.--On Halloween night, Ryan accidentally kills someone, and Shane has seen too many movies to do anything sensible about it.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 53
Kudos: 113
Collections: Skeptic Believer Book Club Hallowe'en Fic Exchange 2020





	When the sun sets, we're both the same

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Impala_Chick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impala_Chick/gifts).



> First of all, big shout out to impala_chick to whom this fic is for. You deserved to get your Halloween fic on time with everyone else without question which is why I volunteered as a pinch-hitter to hopefully write something that'd make up for the wait. I truly hope it is to your taste.
> 
> Secondly, thank you so much to my beta [uneventfulhouses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/uneventfulhouses/pseuds/uneventfulhouses) to whom I owe the biggest debt for her jumping in on the daunting task of cleaning up over 35k of all this in one sitting plus another thank you to [toadreadytoparty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toadreadytoparty/pseuds/toadreadytoparty) who was a great cheerleader and inspired one of my all-time favourite scenes to write. Love you both.
> 
> Finally, this is a work of fiction and if you see your name or the names of someone you know personally

To be clear, their first kill was an accident.

The Halloween get-together in their old mutual friend’s backyard was three blocks away and Shane had fully and delightedly agreed to pregame at Ryan’s. Then, they intended to walk together the whole way. It wasn’t a logistical plan; Shane knew when he’d explained it, but Ryan had responded like he couldn’t and wouldn’t think of a better idea.

No better idea than the two of them finally hanging out again; warm in each other’s renewed company. Despite the vaccine being distributed, people were still understandably uneasy. They’d tried to go back to the routine after that night in September; forming bubbles outside each other because they’d agreed it was just work, but nothing outside of work could beat the easy slide of their conversation, the way Ryan laughed and laughed, and made Shane feel like he was gonna be OK.

Something about the hit of Ryan’s physical presence; the effect of his smile on Shane made him want to use words like “vibes” and “energy” because he hadn’t felt this drunk and alive at the same time before, and only a moron would ignore that it was because of what Ryan was doing to him.

Shane wanted to say he just missed him, but it was deeper than that. Felt like a free-fall most days. Ryan in his dreams; Ryan looking dissatisfied on a video call; Ryan standing closer to him every day they filmed together. It was all tying up together to Shane leaning in when he listened a little like six feet had a loophole. No one said anything. They were getting tested, the vaccination was probably gonna take, and Shane kind of didn’t care in this very particular sense, not when seeing Ryan again had changed him—them.

However, then last Wednesday during a socially distanced meeting, Ryan in the middle of gesticulating broadly outside the office had reached out and clasped Shane on the shoulder, and Shane had felt it in every nerve-ending. He’d stared and stared until he saw Ryan look up at him, startled in realisation and Shane grinned like an idiot about it like they’d shared some kind of inside joke. Ryan didn’t smile back, but he didn’t move his hand either. He kept it cupped on the back of Shane’s shoulder until he’d slid fingers down to his elbow, grasped him firmly there, secret and solid.

They didn’t talk about it after, and they probably never would. Shane just wanted to ride the high that had left him even when Ryan had withdrawn, his palm slinking down almost to Shane’s wrist before it fell away. It felt like high school; the giddiness of it equally as mortifying.

He didn’t want to take a step back from what this was, even if it had no name; even if it was probably gonna hurt like hell when Shane would have to swallow yet another uncomfortable impression that Ryan had a grip on his heart that overrode the boundaries of their friendship; one in which they never discussed boundaries before.

So Shane took another willing step over their unwritten lines when he bought a very specific brand of bourbon. The very one they were drunk on the night Ryan had asked him to leave his job and start a company with him.

“There isn’t anything I wanna do that doesn’t have you in it,” Shane had told him, mouth numb and liquor sticky on his tongue.

Ryan had beamed so bright in relief and awe at him; no easy “yes” came with so immediate a reward.

That easy “yes” had nothing to do with the liquor though. Shane had decided years ago that Ryan would one day ask him to take a gamble on something and that it’d be the best thing to ever happen to him. He once thought Buzzfeed Unsolved was that thing, but then they had really beat a whole pandemic end-of-the-world level bullshit to build and grow something like Watcher together. So now it was all chips in for Shane; he didn’t know how to lose if it was Ryan.

He knocked because it had been over half a year since he used to just walk in with breakfast. Half a year of forgetting where they were before all this, and wanting it all back so badly. At least one-third of the Dirty Boys crew, an inconveniently loud and agonizingly fraternity-framed group of Ryan’s friends that Shane didn’t like, had answered the door. Blond. Tall and ruddy with a dopey grin. Roland.

He took in Shane with a reprehensibly docile look of disinterest. “Here for the Bergmeister?”

Shane grinned big to hide the cringe drooling through the jelly of his spine. “Yeah, he said, uh, I should come by early for drinks.”

“Oh, yeah sure,” was Roland’s numb reply as his glassy stare drifted into the living room faster than his limbs could keep up. _Oh._ He was stoned. Typical Dirty Boy chic. He let Shane pass the threshold and shut the door himself as he drew back into the house, beelining for a party-sized bag of tostitos sitting on their visibly disgusting sofa.

“So what are you supposed to be?”

Shane gestured vaguely at the red track suit he’d had to hit up six different online stores to find in his size. “Um, you seen _The Royal Tenenbaums_?”

Roland was just eating whole-wheat tostitos by the handful; his red-rimmed gaze fixed blearily on Shane’s outfit. He shook his head, and Shane sighed internally.

“No biggie. I’m just Ben Stiller in that film.”

Roland chortled (probably some Pavlovian response to the mention of Ben Stiller) through a mouthful of chips, perching on the back of the couch as Shane went for the old familiar kitchen island to grab a barstool. Obviously, Roland hadn’t seen a Wes Anderson film, which was just as well.

Ryan of course chose right then to wander in from the hallway, looking distracted and irritable. “I think I left my nunchucks out here…oh, _hey!_ ”

Shane burst out laughing at the sight of him. More in delight than anything else because of course, without fail, Ryan looked _good._ Shane could see every single line of his frame in that yellow jumpsuit and the black stripes up his arms only drew the gaze to the hills and valleys of every new muscle Ryan’s quarantine routine had given him.

They weren’t doing a couples’ costume; not really anyway...it was two different concepts. Bruce Lee and Chas Tenenbaum; both in tracksuits of sorts. It was _supposed_ to be funny, not adorable, but...

“You can laugh all you want,” Ryan said, crossing his arms in a bid to look annoyed but his big blast of a smile said differently. “We look like mustard and _ketchup_.”

Roland laughed louder than he needed to from the living room and Ryan turned to look at him, just beaming about someone liking his joke. “You should bring hot dogs to your party; use those for nunchucks,” Roland mimed the gesture of someone whipping nunchucks over their shoulders complete with some mouth side-effects, crumbs flying out of his maw.

Ryan snickered, crossing the room over to Roland with a natural physical comfort he and Shane hadn’t brokered. It was some elaborate dudebro ritual that started like he was gonna tackle Roland over the back of the couch while Roland cackled and fought back getting one beanpole arm around Ryan’s back. They both laughed even harder when the tostito bag hit the rug and spilled.

Shane abruptly quelled the strange wistful tickle in his chest with an irritation he knew could ruin his night. He couldn’t even feel bad for being annoyed that Roland was even there.

“Hey, I brought bourbon!” he snapped, hoping that Ryan didn’t catch the tone when it fell out of his mouth like that. “One or two fingers?”

Ryan straightened, shoving Roland off of him, looking flushed and happy. “Your call; I’ll come grab mine in a sec. I gotta go find my nunchucks...”

He left the room again and Roland began to sluggishly clean up the mess of chips, still smiling soppily. Shane poured two drinks and tried not to hate anyone.

|*|

Roland was watching some commentary sports channel; a repetitive reel of baseball players looking stout and upset about something the dude in the mask—a baseball referee?—was saying. Shane had tuned him and all that out, electing to scroll through Twitter and see some costumes. People were getting out at last, almost guiltlessly so the creatives of the internet were going full ham on DIY looks.

He was on the last mouthful of his second drink, and deeply considering just downing a third out of boredom but Ryan had not reappeared yet. Instead of that, he compromised; he poured a second and picked up Ryan’s untouched drink, moving for the hallway.

He hadn’t been in Ryan’s room since February, and something about approaching it now—with something in their relationship changed in an intangible way—felt like Shane was pushing something he didn’t like the name of.

The noise coming from the cracked door distracted him; it sounded like something heavy being shoved around with Ryan making an irritable grunting sound. Shane hesitated, feeling like an idiot standing out in the hall, oddly nervous about just walking into his best friend’s room; a place he’d been countless times.

Being an idiot standing out in the hall was clearly not a quiet activity because the door flung open and Ryan was standing there looking even more flushed and now much more annoyed. “I’ve looked everywhere; I don’t know where I put those fucking things.”

Shane recovered quickly. “You fucking idiot,” he said slowly and smugly until Ryan’s mouth twitched. “Want help? Or more importantly, wanna wet your whistle?”

Ryan laughed fully then, his eyes squinting up in a warm look as he accepted the proffered glass. “Don’t say it like that.”

Shane breezed into the bedroom after him, dropping himself with a pointedly comfortable air on Ryan’s unmade bed. “It is a perfectly regular saying, and you’re lying if you’re gonna tell me you’ve never heard it.”

Ryan snorted, throwing a pile of clothes on the bed that he had very clearly yanked out of his closet before downing his whole glass of bourbon. “Sure—god, where the fuck did I put it?!”

Shane let out a low whistle. He wasn’t keen on making good on his offer to help. Ryan’s room was now ground zero, and he was about to make a comment about Ryan ruining his go-to film set. He must have looked at this room from the angle of Ryan’s camera for months. And now with his deconstructing it one piece of clothing at a time, Shane felt a silent warm welcome. What that meant in terms of this new entitlement he felt about Ryan was another question entirely.

Ryan opened his second mirror closet door with a long anxious sigh and Shane saw it, propped against the back of the closet wall, almost up against some tote containers. The black handle of it was unmistakable and Shane sighed, knowing that a drunk Ryan with that thing would be so much worse than he was about it sober.

“Why don’t you use _that_?”

Ryan followed the direction of his head-nod and landed on it instantly. He grabbed it by the handle and unearthed it, whipping it a little too quickly out in front of him so that Shane flinched.

“Bruce Lee doesn’t use a katana,” Ryan announced flatly, setting his glass down so he could wave the thing about with two hands.

Shane watched the arc of the metal blade take up space in Ryan’s little room and was hit with the image of Ryan’s yellow jumpsuit, standing hilariously stalwart like someone had just gifted it to him, and the way he looked, staring down at it like he was about to dive into that god awful bit. Shane burst out laughing; the comedy of it hit him so hard he fell backward into Ryan’s pillows, needing to hold his glass up to avoid covering Ryan’s sheets in bourbon.

“Well, you wouldn’t be Bruce Lee anymore—” he began, hiccoughing as he watched Ryan’s gaze flicker from Shane to his own reflection in his mirror closet door with a dawning realisation.

“Oh my god, I’m Uma Thurman!”

Shane’s eyes swam with tears, probably just now feeling the liquor. “You’re Uma Thurman!” he reported with some awe he knew Ryan would get a kick out of. “You’re really doing _Kill Bill_ in the year 2020, Ryan!”

Ryan’s frown crumpled and a hearty cackle fell out of him as he looked around at Shane. “I can’t believe you couldn’t wait and got drunk without me!”

Shane took a very pronounced and over-the-top gulp of his drink with his neck craned to avoid spilling. He finished it successfully as Ryan shook his head, muttering a particularly mock-savage. “You son of a bitch…”

“You’ll never keep up; I’ll be more lit—”

“Don’t fucking say _‘lit’_.”

“—more _lit_ than you until the party’s over.”

Laughing incredulously, Ryan drew forward, dropping a knee on the bedspread with the katana braced on the mattress. “You’re really gonna walk into that party drunker than me…”

Shane, who had ducked his head down, still laughing, turned over and looked up at him. Ryan was smiling, the shine of his eyes under his lashes must have been reflected off the yellow of his outfit or something because it felt like some sort of bird with feathery insistent wings had brushed all of Shane’s insides, grazing some place untouchable and giving him a sharp swoop of giddiness and horror. Shane stopped laughing entirely; stopped with a deep, shaking breath.

“I thought you guys were going to a party?”

Ryan broke their stare with a quirk of his mouth, not displeasure or anything; just simple distraction as Roland had propped himself against the jamb of Ryan’s doorway, now less stoned and smiling particularly fondly at Ryan with an even more amused glance at the katana.

Shane sat up, suddenly less heady; the thing in his stomach flapped its wings only once more, probably put off by the leap of heat up his spine. Shane was annoyed but he kept his voice level when he said, “You got your katana; let’s go already.”

|*|

“ _That's right. I killed your master. And now I'm gonna kill_ you _, with your own sword, no less, which in the very immediate future, will become..._ my _sword_.”

Shane let out his first guffaw since they’d left the house, the white of his breath floating above his vision of Ryan standing in his black windbreaker with his jumpsuit in stark under the streetlights starting to flicker on.

“ _Bitch, you don’t have a future_ ,” Shane quoted reflexively. “Also that’s Elle Driver you’re quoting; get your characters straight.”

It was chilly for late October in LA. Shane had become acclimatized. He was an LA resident now; throwing on layers whenever it dipped below fifty-five degrees.

Ryan had tried to catch up by tossing back a second drink before they left. His mouth was red when he smiled wickedly and addressed a mailbox. “ _You and I have unfinished business_ ,” he growled at it, pointing his dumb sword at it.

“Better,” Shane said warmly, distracted by the notion that someone in any of the passing traffic might see them; two idiots in red and yellow jumpsuits, one of them wielding a sharp weapon with Halloween as their only alibi for being this dumb in public. “Every Tarantino fan at the party is gonna try to take you home.”

Ryan cackled, stopping in his tracks to sit in that notion for a second. “I’m gonna be so _popular_ with the white boy psychopath crowd.”

Shane had to brace himself against the metal fence they were passing for that one. He couldn’t breathe.

They had been walking for twenty-five minutes. It wasn’t even a long walk to the party, it’d take him twelve minutes on average—eleven when he was alone and sober. Tonight it was the two of them passing closed store fronts, and the strange lethargy from the bourbon was on him like a wet blanket. It was nice to walk out in the open somewhere with Ryan again; one foot in front of the other, stretching their walk out to cover another minute or two. Ryan kept stopping because he’d remember yet another _Kill Bill_ quote to deliver with enough panache that Shane kept laughing, ducking out of sight when a car slowed to gawk at them. So they definitely dawdled, for one, experiencing their own little party.

As they crossed an alleyway, Shane considered it; he thought of all the people he didn’t care about probably already started with the festivities; he thought of all the small talk, the performance of walking into places with Ryan in tow. Maybe they didn’t need to go. Maybe their Halloween could just be this.

He turned on his heel mid-step, walking backward with the intention to make the flippant suggestion—make it sound like he didn’t care either way—but in those street-lit fluorescent seconds, Shane registered two things: Ryan was waving his damn katana in a particularly hilarious arc with the now voided intention of startling him and two: a man was approaching Ryan’s back from the alley, eyes bright with malice, lips cracked and punctured with flaky dry skin, nothing but menace, and the panic of someone about to commit to a very profoundly desperate act.

It happened very quickly, and yet not very quickly at all. Shane was paralyzed as the blade part of Ryan’s katana swiped up when he swung it thoughtlessly—drunkenly—and Shane remembered blinking like the scene would change if he opened his eyes again, but the man was still writhing around on the ground with a stripe of glistening red on his throat and Ryan was staring down at him like he’d never seen anything so horrific or gripping. 

They both stared numbly, intently, until the man’s erratic choking spasms on the cement became a haunting stillness in a pool of his own blood.

“Whoops,” Ryan said, the low register of his voice seeming like a shout to Shane in the silence of the night and of the now dead man laying at their feet.

|*|

It took way too long for Shane to figure out how to gather his faculties to actually react. He and Ryan stared and stared at the dead body for what felt like aeons before Shane uttered a faint, “Oh, fuck…”

Something in the sound of his voice must have jump-started Ryan because in his periphery, Shane saw his head swivel over. Shane couldn’t tear his eyes away from the corpse—a real human being’s face staring in terror out at the night sky—and the distantly morbid notion creeping across the synapses in his brain responding to the sight of the wet blood drooling a trail of dirt toward the crags of the alley’s soil and grass. It looked very much like the movies wanted you to think it looked, and some part of him was a little let down.

He finally looked up at Ryan, and something changed.

Shane couldn’t count on his hands how often he’d caught Ryan’s gaze across a room just as they’d come to understand something at the same time. The world was an ocean sometimes, teeming with soft misunderstandings and terrible jokes waiting to be told and Shane now knew; he could clock it—the very precise moment when he’d look over at Ryan and know, in his fucking marrow, that he was about to watch him do something terrifyingly stupid.

Terrifying because Shane knew that if he caught Ryan’s eye in that sacred minuscule moment, that he had to be at least ninety-percent on board or get left behind in the dust.

This was Boyle Heights. The streets around them were bare. It was just them and the coaxing shadow of an unlit alley, graffiti taking testament to this truly world-ending moment.

“I didn’t see him,” Ryan stated. There was an odd panic in his voice; different from the man he knew in the dark, always on the verge of a scream when a flashlight’s battery sprung to life. “I didn’t even hear him…”

“I saw him,” Shane replied. His heart was hammering in his ears. “He looked like...he looked like he was gonna do something—”

“How do you _know_ that?” Ryan’s tone was scaring the shit out of him frankly. His eyes were still wide with a new sort of surprise, but his mouth was set in a firm unflinching line. There was blood on the katana, on the legs of his pants, and Shane saw a sticky residue from the handle to the naked stretch of skin on his forearm. Stray arterial splatter.

Every crime TV show, film, murder fantasies in fiction wriggled itself to the forefront of Shane’s mind and he could feel it all sink in.

“I don’t know,” Shane mumbled, starting to pat his pockets for his phone. “Ryan, we should call—”

“Don’t.”

The first thing he registered was the warm, wet weight of Ryan’s hand on his wrist, clenching firmly. He flinched back, but Ryan’s fingers caught him tighter, gripping tight enough to drag him a little closer. Shane felt his ankle almost give, defensively rooted to his spot on the pavement.

“But…”

Shane stared at him. He knew what was going to happen and he would later remember the tide of relief the moment the actual protracted congestion in his chest unclenched; Ryan’s eyes were so fixed on him with a question and a challenge that was teeming with five years of invalidated hopes and intimacies that never came up.

“So what then…?” Shane began. “It was _self-defense_ , Ryan.”

Ryan slowly unwrapped his fingers from Shane’s wrist and Shane felt the tendons release with a sharp ache, his skin burning from the squeeze. “The _company_ ,” was all he said.

Shane knew that Ryan wouldn’t have to ask; that was more than enough, and they were in it together now. He lifted his hand out of his pocket to show Ryan his palm—empty—before he casted a look around. They were too far from an intersection; the alcove of the alley was completely shrouded.

Ryan got down into a crouch, pulling his sleeve down to cover his fingertips, and Shane watched him wipe the end of his blade on the dead guy’s pant leg—a tacky lick of blood on denim—before he reached over with one shaking hand to the inside of the man’s jacket.

“He’s got something; might be a lighter,” he muttered. Shane didn’t move as Ryan shook the man’s jacket pocket loose and as expected, some coins, a few crumpled napkins, and a Zippo tumbled out onto the dirt. Shane was on the top of a sigh of defeat when Ryan sprang back which nearly made Shane’s heart leap up his esophagus.

“What— _what?!”_

Ryan shook his head vigorously and waved him over. Against his better judgement, Shane drew around to the other side of the body to get a full and proper look at what appeared to be a gun that had fallen out of the jacket onto the man’s stomach.

Shane’s palms were sweating now. He was almost sure he’d never seen a handgun in real life before. “So now what?”

Ryan rested his forearms on his knees, still in his tentative little squat as he looked up at Shane. He looked so pale. “We don’t know him. The only DNA we’ve left is on my katana.”

Shane took one giant breath, his own clammy hands jammed back in his pockets. He backed up when Ryan stood and faced him, sword gripped so loosely in his hand and eyes bright with ideas and questions; all for Shane.

“So you’re saying we—”

“We just _walk_ , yes.”

“Okay,” Shane said slowly and softly.

Ryan glanced at the body one more time. Shane watched his eyes drag over the mess he’d made with a curious kind of disbelief. “You do get what I’m asking from you, right?” he prodded distractedly.

His heart was still beating so fast. On TV, people talked about that one critical moment, when they pulled the trigger or slipped on the ski mask; where everything moved so slow and it was like the world was crystal clear with the gravity of what they’d done. One moment when it felt like everything was coming together—coalescence.

Shane couldn’t feel further from it, his heart was just pounding and his thoughts were racing and scattered between a million different things “ _Ryan_ ,” he muttered, grabbing his wrist and starting them back on their route down the street. His brain was screaming and the only real solid thing was the heat of Ryan’s skin under his fingers, against his palm. It made everything else feel real still. “I said _okay_.”

|*|

“We get to Ben’s party,” Ryan was muttering a mile a minute now. “We gotta act like nothing happened; you know how this has gotta work—the alibis—people have to know we’re at this thing; remember us. Mention the time to someone; probably clock it back like five-ten minutes—I don’t know—”

Shane had let go of Ryan’s hand ages ago but his palm was still burning with it when they entered the yard. The music was filtering in over the rush of nine pm traffic and the laughter and chatter “You’re rambling. I get it; we just gotta be us.”

“Yeah exactly,” Ryan answered very softly. “Just gotta be us.”

It turned out not to be that hard really. The two of them at a party was only amplified by the adrenaline sprouting little strange scenarios; it felt like partying as the apocalypse approached with the terrifying sense that at any juncture while he and Ryan were laughing uproariously, panicking in the refresh of the jokes—the backyard gate would swing open and cops would burst through, declaring that he and Ryan had been seen.

Just the two of them, arrested in view of almost everyone they knew. How fitting.

Shane kept very close to Ryan for the remainder of the party, panicked about moments standing alone with anyone else, hearing the hollow frankness in his voice when he tried to make small talk. Ryan, on the other hand, was like a walking liquid star in the hanging lantern lights of the backyard. Even his skin glittered with a sheen from the blanket of city-light blue of the moon. He had actually managed to catch up with Shane and overtake him after two Jägerbombs.

“You’re _so_ drunk,” Shane remarked a little warmly. He ducked low, too close to Ryan’s ear but Ryan leaned in to listen and suddenly Shane was speaking into his hair. He thought for a very acidic moment that he could kiss him; he could kiss him and that wouldn’t be the wildest thing they’d done that night. “I don’t think getting that drunk was part of the plan?”

Ryan’s smile shone more like a knife right then and Shane caught himself pulling away last minute when Ryan twisted in his arm. “You got a plan, big boy?” He was flushed and hot as he seemed not to notice that he’d almost gotten himself kissed, giggles spilling out of him.

Shane stepped away, placing a safe distance between him and Ryan, his whole front warm with the residuals of those words. “Nah, I just. I’m kinda _fucking_ terrified, man.”

“Don’t be,” Ryan slurred, turning the beam of smile toward the circle of people by the Jenga game as it toppled amidst their screams. “I’m not.”

Shane believed him and followed after him for the rest of the night. The “fake” blood splatter on Ryan’s jumpsuit, their conceptual ketchup and mustard jokes, and Ryan’s _Kill Bill_ quotes were a hit—if people groaning in obvious exasperation and some laughing more obviously _at_ them than with them was any indication that it was memorable.

It was approximately after four A.M. when Ryan started to get that abducted look just as the skyline started to look a little grey. Eyes vacant and glazed, listening to one of their old coworkers yammer drunkenly about Kierkegaard’s commentary on class complacency and Tiktok.

They hadn’t discussed what they were gonna do afterward. It was survive the party and then move on from the way it was going, and now that he’d had a few drinks in him, Shane was finally feeling a reserved kind of distance between the image of the body lying in that alleyway over a block away and the current him sitting beside Ryan in the front yard waiting for a Lyft.

“Think it’ll be sunny today?” he remarked a bit abruptly and Ryan’s head swivelled on him, startled. He gave a noncommittal head-shake and curled his knees up, resting his chin on them. Shane wanted to reach out, do something to signify—what exactly?

Then the Lyft rolled into the driveway and Ryan was first to get in. Shane slid in after him but Ryan was already on the other side, practically pressed to the window. He only glanced at Shane when the driver asked them for their destination.

Shane blinked, uncertain. The Lyft was warmer than the outdoors and Ryan looked snug back in his jacket and sleepy; content but silent and for once, Shane couldn’t read him at all.

He stuttered over Ryan’s address.

He could swear Ryan shot him another brand of smile before looking out the foggy, grey window. They’d been relatively quiet going up to Ryan’s street. The only explanation being that there was little they could say that wouldn’t be infused with much more than they wanted to let on; certainly not in public if anything.

When they pulled up in front of Ryan’s house, Shane hesitated, watching as Ryan fumbled with his seatbelt and practically threw himself out the door, all his extremities slowed and goofy.

He turned to the Lyft driver who was putting the vehicle in park so he could look at his phone. He opened his mouth to ask if the guy didn’t mind driving on to his place just as Ryan turned and frowned at him blearily, forearm resting on the doorframe.

“Aren’t you coming?” he said as if Shane should have known he was, in fact, spending the night.

“Oh,” he just said, the realisation hitting him like a barren hopeful hysteria. “Yeah...yeah, I’m—yeah.”

When Ryan opened the door to his place, he stood out of the way to let Shane pass him into the entrance hall to which Ryan followed, kicking off his shoes and setting them neatly in line with his other sneakers. Shane followed suit and wandered in after him. It must have been pushing five A.M. because Ryan’s windows were spilling cold, morning light over every surface of his furniture.

Shane slept on Ryan’s couch that night. He actually didn’t expect to be able to sleep; felt actually a lot like he’d lie awake, swimming in the linger of the drinks he’d had, the brush of other people around him again and Ryan standing so close to him only seconds after a man had dropped dead in front of them.

He fell asleep thinking about the dried dust of blood on Ryan’s fingertips.

So the dream was no big surprise. Shane didn’t often remember his dreams, most times when he woke an impression would be there, cushioned right under the cradle of his head where the memories whispered, in the last seams of his subconscious and astride his first thought of being alive.

He was in a shopping mall, a strange mix of Woodfield and a place in Glendale. The mall was full of people, but his gaze never strayed from the vision of the single escalator he was heading for. The plan and intent vibrant in his mind that he had to go down. He had to go down. The voices of other people weren’t right as he crossed them, their shoes. For whatever reason he couldn’t look up at them. Their voices were whispers, loud; deafening like they were screaming with only the breath in their lungs.

_Going down. He’s. He’s. He’s. Going down._

Shane watched the lick of the escalator belt seep through metal as he rested his foot on it. He was barefoot for some reason. He looked up at last and—

The sunset on an LA street; a cold, silent witness.

It trailed empty, gold heat streaks, but changed nothing. The cement under his toes were patterned with its pale butter rays and he stood alone under the dusky, fading glare. The ground groaned with the weight as if it were held by old screws and nails and moisture, but the windows on the houses he passed quivered with each breeze.

He could feel the beads of sweat blooming on his upper lip. A growing dread for the shift or scratch of someone crawling right behind him. He registered it like it was a simple fact. Attaching the scrape of knees to the scream of skin against pavement and the way he wanted to walk faster; to run, but his legs weren’t cooperating. He felt like gelatin, drawing across a cool LA street and within this precise moment the _living_ sounds began. Taps by fingernails, those fingers so strong, gaining intensity as the dying music of his sleep wore down.

He knew what he was gonna see when he looked back, so he didn’t want to do it. He kept walking as the street carried on, as he followed a path that looked a lot like the stretch of sidewalk he and Ryan had wandered down. The switch he could activate; the fear response, the panic that made him let go was voided by the jelly of his legs, his joints, his brain.

He was slowing down and he felt the touch of fingers at his bare ankle. He felt like he was pulling every tendon in his muscles taut as he tried to push himself to run, but it only made him tremble and slow down even more. He could hear it, touching the spaces around his footfalls, like it was going to make him stumble.

Just the thought of it, of his own fall had him on his knees. There was no impact; it was just him on his feet one second and then hands in front of him, all fours, the next. He thrashed when a hand set itself fully on his ankle, panic rushing through him as he felt the cry fall out of him, sharp and scared. He looked up ahead for something to grab and there he was.

Ryan. A pair of eyes, sad and soulful all at once. The cluster colours shades of black of his dark and shorn hair featured over angular muscle and mahogany skin. He stood stark in the LA dusk; his dark clothing was as insubstantial as stained glass paint as he watched Shane, panic forming in his features naked and pleading as Shane felt.

He reached out. Fully felt the protest in his arms when he did and he grabbed.

“What the—Shane?!”

Relief set in seconds after he felt the cool of the sweat on his shoulders, his neck, and heard the sound of the TV, an announcer droning on about the last vaccine distribution for herd immunity. He was sitting upright on Ryan’s couch, staring out at the mid-afternoon light pouring in through the kitchen window but at the other end of the couch was Ryan himself in his blood orange tank top, looking rough and tousled, waxy and tired. He was sitting with Shane’s legs on his lap, like he had slipped himself underneath them while Shane was sleeping. He looked exhausted but he was braced a bit nervously against the armrest, which was sensible considering Shane had probably thrashed around and sat up like some kind of maniac; reaching out to grab at nothing.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, his voice coming out more slurred than he expected. “Bad dream. Did you grab my ankle?”

A grudgingly wicked smile out of the clearly hungover fog found its way onto Ryan’s mouth. “Yeah, did I scare ya?”

Shane dropped back down on the makeshift pillow of his jacket. “Fuck’s sake…” he breathed, waiting for the acid in his throat to ebb from the hungover vertigo of his sitting up too fast. “Did you really need your couch back that bad?”

Ryan snorted and then made a pained sound like he regretted it. “I was just moving these long stilts out of the way so I could sit and watch the news. I’m hungover; don’t harass me for wanting to sit on my own couch.”

Shane groaned and shifted his feet out of the way, aware only distantly of Ryan’s hand around his ankle only moments before, as if the acknowledgement of the touch was more real than the feeling through the fabric of his track pants. “It’s not that…”

They were silent after Shane curled up again, shutting his eyes. He felt like shit. Maybe Ryan would drive him home so he could shower and get back into bed or something; maybe Ryan would come in with him and stay.

“Do you think anyone found him yet?” Ryan said to their silence, to Shane’s hot, soft thoughts.

It was back there again. The chill of the alleyway, a man lying dead at their feet. The vivid dark of his blood on the dirt. Shane stared at the TV screen and didn’t register the image at all.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Just after two.”

“Oh shit, didn’t Steven book a meeting for eleven?”

Ryan shrugged philosophically, which meant he’d had no intention of going in the first place.

Shane laughed a little. “Then, I’d say yeah. Someone’s _definitely_ walked by that alley and spotted a dead guy.”

Ryan didn’t reply. Shane felt it settle between them; a bitter and self-imposed reality-check. A new break in their future, fear, and judgements. It couldn’t have been helped, Ryan killing the guy, but to leave him there?

“Oh shit!” Ryan shouted suddenly, and as he felt the shout permeate his nerve-endings and the nausea swoop up his middle, Shane took a sudden and sharp pleasure in the thought of kicking him. He would never, but— “Shane, _look_!”

Shane opened his eyes. Ryan was gawking at the television screen so Shane followed his gaze. There it was. The alley; every streak of graffiti now so familiar to Shane he could probably redraw them, but it was a shaky shot now, a white sheet and a glimpse of the blood, now congealed and gleaming on the flat-packed dirt and grass as cops and coroners and crime tape blocked a full view. Ryan seized the remote, clicking the volume up as the voice-over listed names in the department responsible for the case and statistics. Shane didn’t hear a single detail. His gaze was drawn to the lower-third of the news ticker.

_[ **SLASHING VICTIM FOUND IN BOYLE HEIGHTS ALLEGEDLY TIED TO ALT-RIGHT FORUMS** ]_

It sank in real slow like molasses, and Shane gripped the back of the sofa to sit himself upright as Ryan slid to the edge of the cushion, elbows on his thighs as he rested his chin on his clasped fingers.

“... _just on the corner of first and Anderson, an unnamed local jogger_ —”

“It’s always a jogger,” Ryan muttered what seemed reflexively.

“— _happened upon the gruesome sight of an LA resident, male; age forty-three, killed the night before by throat-slashing. Unfortunately, what the LAPD uncovered as they identified the victim who we now know to be one Donnie Campbell, was his unregistered firearm and a distressing history on forums and message boards under the username HH1388. Campbell’s home computer history shows graphic depictions of torture_ —”

“Ho..ly _shit,_ ” Shane whispered.

Ryan covered his face with his hands, a breathy laugh shuddering out of him. Shane heard relief like the resting of an elastic wound tight coming out of him. Ryan’s back swelled as he took one more exaggerated breath. Something in it, about the striking sight of him bent into himself, arms taut and bare. Shane melted with him, but he couldn’t say a word. His mind was racing again; so many concessions and over-explanations couldn’t make this any easier. Most of it pinned on the unsettling fact that that he and Ryan were probably about to get away with murder.

“— _threats of mass execution, explicitly racist messages about wishing harm on non-white residents of Boyle Heights_ …”

Shane swung his legs off the couch, shifting closer. “Hey, listen—”

“I _killed_ him,” Ryan stated suddenly, his voice coming out oddly clear over the drone of the news. “One less garbage human.”

Shane froze. He’d been thinking the exact same thing. “Yeah?”

He finally looked at Shane; he looked activated and charged, his pupils seemed blown wide as a smile spilled across his mouth like a pooling fire. “Shane,” he said simply, excitedly.

“Yeah?” Shane repeated nervously.

“We’re _vigilantes_. You and me? We’re literally Batman.”

Few things were worse to Shane than hearing his best friend say something so stupid so seriously that he could have laughed in his face, except for the rare occasion like this where instead, Shane only felt an immediate sprig of excitement because that stupid thing thrilled him beyond belief.

“First of all, we can’t _both_ be Batman,” he began, watching how Ryan watched him back delightedly, how he seemed to be waiting for Shane to say something specific; as if he knew Shane would.

Ryan sat up properly on the couch then, sliding his arm across the back of it like he wasn’t hungover, like nothing had ever bothered him in the world. “Well, I say we can. We’re Bat _men_.”

Shane laughed, and dropped his head back on the couch, shutting his eyes to the sight of Ryan looking at him expectantly like that, and thought with so little despair that he wasn’t going to ask what Ryan really meant by “ _we_ ” when Shane hadn’t killed anybody because he knew what he wanted the answer to be already.

|*|

So to be clear, their first kill was not _theirs,_ but Ryan’s. Shane’s first kill came in the middle of the week, but by that time Shane had it all foggy. There was something growing under the both of them, crawling behind them like the sound of that thing in his nightmares—as they kept on with their routine. Shane was back at home, and they were still keeping at the most tentative early morning meetings over Zoom calls.

Every once in a while, Shane could feel Ryan looking at him; not in the way the platform of it made it so they were always looking at each other constantly. This was different; a focused question in his eyes in the pixels of his image, watching Shane, wondering something so legible on his face that Shane kept wanting to stop everything and just ask him.

That Wednesday, Ryan texted him while they were in between shoots. _**Now that we’re meeting up. All I wanna do is hang out. We should go somewhere tonight.**_

Shane sent the shaka emoji, which he knew Ryan would appreciate. There was nowhere to go; few things were properly open yet but Shane knew Ryan had designs, and while Shane was an expert at turning his brain off when he didn’t want to think about something specific, he kept reliving the grasp of Ryan’s hand on his wrist, streaked with blood, asking him without words for loyalty that Shane had already given him.

Perplexingly, Ryan sent him a penguin emoji.

|*|

Ryan showed up at his door a little after five, breathing like he’d run a marathon, but that wasn’t what startled Shane. He watched Ryan make a show of it, brushing his palm back along his hairline with one hand like Leo as Gatsby just so Shane could see the tacky gold rings on almost every finger over a white silk sleeve sporting a big jewel-encrusted watch. Shane knew the sport jacket too well; he couldn’t help the awestruck smile that probably plastered itself across his face when he took in the very chain Ryan had slipped over his head just two Autumns ago now dangling on Ryan’s naked chest between the lapels of an overly unbuttoned shirt.

He couldn’t keep the delight out of his voice. “Wha...t is going on?”

“Just imagine it,” Ryan said to him as if they were in the middle of talking about it; like it was some long conversation they’d been having since the moment Ryan whispered the words, “the company” at him in the alley. “Driving out to Santa Monica just as it’s opened. We roll into the Pacific Palisades and crash a reception like we said, just playing the role of two assholes; we really ham it up, just mock the shit outta those fucking yuppies.”

Shane paused. He would already be in love with the idea, but something was bothering him; the short notice maybe? “You just arbitrarily wanna crash a wedding?”

Ryan adjusted his cuffs in a very distinctively James Bond fashion as he walked past Shane into his apartment with alarming casualty. “So I’m thinking you dress how you did for the Streamys—maybe lean a little more into it—because we gotta look like we got a lot of money but we’re disgustingly stupid about it.”

Shane shook his head. “Why do I feel like you’re trying to get through some kind of bucket list before…”

“Before what?” Ryan propped himself on the armrest of Shane’s couch, still primping in what seemed a bid not to look at Shane directly anymore. “What do you mean?”

The vibe in the room shifted. Shane standing a little uselessly in his entryway and Ryan glared at his own cuticles, acting the part of a well-dressed asshole just in spirit alone.

Shane shrugged, trying to feel like how the shrug was supposed to look. “Ryan, three days ago, you killed a guy and no one’s come around asking questions. You’re _gonna_ get away with it. Are we doing this just for the fun of it or is this...like a fear thing?”

Ryan exhaled a long, irritable breath before he looked up at Shane again. “It’s just _fun_. I thought we could just—I don’t know—do something dumb together, just us.”

Shane drew closer into the living room. “You sure? I’m not gonna get a bad phone call tomorrow saying you turned yourself in or something like that?”

“Shane—”

“Because,” Shane continued louder this time. “Because if you wanna go down for accidentally killing a piece of shit like that, I—” He watched Ryan’s eyes search his and he was suddenly viciously and terribly afraid that Ryan was gonna see it, written right there. It was such a compunctious thought that he shut his eyes and turned for his bedroom as he said it, so he wouldn’t need to register Ryan’s reaction as he spoke. “—I’ll probably go right down with you.”

|*|

Shane had ventured a drive or two as far as Santa Monica Bay in the past but he had never driven into the Palisades. He didn’t know why; Ryan had mentioned it often enough as the site of some pretty popular blockbuster films, but the sight of the pale stucco houses, black iron gates, swank fountains, and people driving their Murciélagos and any of those other cars worth over three-hundred grand made him backpedal hard.

Something about knowing Ryan would be there, laughing along with him at the culture shock made it easier to consider, but the way Ryan just so happened upon a wedding date for a couple of people he didn’t know; how it had to be that night; how he’d instructed Shane to leave his phone at home; something was screwy.

Even Ryan steering into the parking lot of Temescal Gateway Park without a word when— according to him the venue was at some Spanish-style home on Sunset Boulevard—was weirdest of all.

“Ryan, what are we _doing_?”

“You think I could breeze into their valet parking system with this thing? Nah, it’s best to just walk up.”

Shane unbuckled his seatbelt, mindful of the way Ryan kept checking his watch. “OK, that’s fair but then why didn’t we take an UberX or something? At most, this would be an hour’s rate away, and if you’re gonna have a drink—”

“Not planning to drink.”

Shane hesitated. Weirdest thing Ryan had put forward all evening. He rested his arms on the roof of the car, watching Ryan carefully. “I thought a big part of the point of crashing a yuppie wedding might be the open bar…I’m picturing fountains of champagne; maybe they hand every guest a bottle of some vintage circa—I dunno—before I was born.”

That made Ryan smile but his eyes were hard and alight with something strange fixed on everything else but Shane’s gaze. “You gotta keep your wits on with these people, Shane. We only get one chance at this—”

“I had thought we were just gonna razz some brainless rich assholes, but you’re going full Ethan Hawke on me; what’s going on?”

Ryan finally looked at him, probably drawn by the reference or something particularly bracing he was thinking of. It was abruptly chilling. Shane couldn’t read Ryan all the way through lately but he had memorised his expressions and this was a whole new look. This was as if Ryan, having just cleared a space in his head, had found the bareness to be suddenly filled with Shane, and he fixed that clear look at him quite unapologetically. His lips parted with a resolve and a bright, seething panic suddenly eyes very wide.

“We’re gonna enter through those trees over there and climb the fence. I saw this place on _Architectural Digest_ last week, so I scoped out the place on Monday—”

“What?” Shane stared as he rounded the car. “Ryan, _what?_ ”

“— _and_ if we get in through the topiary garden, we could be any guest. Especially—” Here he took a few short steps toward Shane and reached out, affected in that way of his where every time he did it, it felt like he’d been meaning to do it for hours, and touched the low French lapel of his jacket. “—since we’re dressed the part.”

As Ryan drew away and began to walk off, a breeze sliced a little sharply between them, coming down from the Santa Monica mountains. It was the type of metallic breeze Shane could smell the rain in but when he tipped his face up to the sky it was stark blue with only wisps of white. Shane didn’t know what to say. He liked to think Ryan was a loopy little fella at his best, but if he thought Shane was about to parkour his way into a Palisade house on Sunset Boulevard, he was finally actually gonna rethink this whole “most ideas Ryan had were good ideas” dogma he’d attached himself to.

However, as they drew close to a stone wall that he was easily able to peer over, Shane learned that Ryan had something different in mind from the way he immediately crouched low and laced his fingers together. “I’ll boost ya.”

Shane braced himself, one hand on Ryan’s shoulder, but as he felt the spring tension of Ryan ready to toss him, he balked. “You’ve clearly thought this through, so if I roll over this thing and land on my neck, what’s your game plan?”

Ryan beamed at him too brightly for the prospect of Shane’s soon-to-be embarrassing finish. “Uh, how about _don’t_ do _that._ ”

“Okay, but what if I do?”

“If you really want to break your neck just to spite me, I’ll tell your parents it was because you joined a murder cult in Silicon Valley.”

Shane grimaced. “Yeah, they’ll hate that.”

“I figured. So use the top of the wall like a vaulting horse—”

“I’m not a gymnast, Ryan!”

“Oh I _know_ , so I’m telling you to brace both hands on the top of the wall when I push you, so you can use the weight of your legs to swing yourself up and over, then keep your—”

“Um, so I’ve decided I don’t wanna do this!” Shane hissed down at him, starting to panic. “I don’t wanna—”

“Fuck this. 3-2-1- _up_ you go!”

Shane made an embarrassing yelp but at least he didn’t land on his neck. He _did_ manage to snag the pocket of his sport jacket on a particularly egregious stone. He did just as Ryan said he should but something happened on his drop. He heard the alarming tearing sound and it was once he hit the ground on the other side he looked down at his pocket. He sighed, watching Ryan’s hands plant on the wall’s top and with an almost infuriating ease, the rest of him appeared before he twisted on practically one hand to sit himself on it and swing his legs over. Shane knew in his heart of hearts, he had not looked like _that_.

Ryan landed with his knees bent; it was no superhero landing but his suit was untouched by the maneuver. Shane held up the ripped part of his jacket for Ryan to see.

“Oh my god,” Ryan whispered, covering his mouth with his hands in a weak attempt not to burst out laughing, and he devolved into wheezing hiccoughs.

“This was my best suit!” Shane retorted, but he couldn’t stop his own snickers as he gingerly moved all of his usual pocket paraphernalia (some spare change; a packet of candy or nuts—he didn’t look—and a button) into the one that wasn’t torn, caught up in the vibrancy of the two of them crouched in the leaves of a topiary garden, squeaking out suppressed giggles over Shane’s torn suit.

When they sobered up, Shane followed as Ryan stepped right into, as promised, a full blown topiary garden filled with fading green shrubberies shorn into the shape of cocktail glasses with clipped white roses in the center. All was separated by white stucco Spanish-style short walls on stone pathways meandering toward the large house up a grassy hill.

“There’s blindspots behind the topiary, so if we keep close to them before we touch the portico, there’ll be no trace. Just walk though, Shane; just walk when we hit the portico like we were just out for smoke or something…” Ryan muttered, nudging him before he started off on a less-than casual trot. “It’s suspicious if we run.”

“Ok, but you’re running, Ryan,” Shane whispered as they stepped up on the stone walkway.

“I’m _not,_ ” Ryan snapped back, slowing down immediately.

Shane followed as Ryan hurried through to the larger side of the white stucco house stepping under the overhang with its wide arched doorways. At the end of the shaded hall stood two brass-handled double doors tucked around the corner of a large marble and brick portico.

“I can’t believe people live like this,” Shane muttered, staring at the clearly custom architecture, built for someone with a vision to be surrounded by beautiful things forever and the money to do it.

“To the detriment of others,” Ryan replied and it was the first time today he sounded contemptuous. Shane paused his steps, watching as Ryan trotted up to the doors, pulling the large brass handle with both hands just to peek in. The hinges creaked and instantly the muted breeze from outside was in stark contrast to the press of noise, fireplace heat and cigar smoke. “You ready?”

Shane nodded.

The place was lousy with people scattered over a silky shag-carpeted room. With chandeliers hanging low, the room glowed orange over close to half a hundred guests. Ryan immediately twisted on the spot and looked up at Shane, eyes wide.

“We gotta get drinks,” he whispered.

“I thought you weren’t gonna—”

“No, no, just to hold. We’ll look weird otherwise.”

Shane watched Ryan affect a straight-backed sort of sway to his walk while in a permanent state of adjusting his cuffs. “Yeah, would _hate_ to look weird,” he said.

It was like the actual rustle of money crushing together; cocktail dresses, tassels and lurid blends of red, pinks, aquas, and greens between stretches of black ties and bespoke suits. There was the clink of glasses and china as people ate precious sandwiches off of tiny plates and drank from comically long flutes of champagne.

A few people glanced their way as Ryan stepped into the room but they appeared to be inconspicuous because especially as a tall man, Shane had never felt so much indifference aimed aggressively at him. He reflexively nodded at a man whose gaze lingered a little longer at him out of bloodshot eyes on a mottled face and the hands of someone who had never seen a day of labour. He looked oddly familiar.

As Shane searched around for a bar, he saw a woman laugh into the back of her hand light enough to sound like silk and he could have sworn he caught a man across the room uttering the phrase, “My _pied-à-terre_ in Monaco,” at another woman who was wearing a felt hat that looked like it had been decorated with tiny chunks of granite.

“These people are actual parodies of themselves,” he said softly and Ryan’s eyes shone when he glanced back at him.

The cocktail bar was up on a platform in the third room they passed where the music was clearly live. A man clearly hired to smile and play an endless reel of pop covers in lounge style sat behind a piano in the middle of a ring of a large gathering of guests. He was visibly rebuffing the interest of a few people who’d had too much to drink as they swiveled between the bar and the piano lid.

“Two uh, gin martinis please,” Shane told the woman at the bar as Ryan looked distractedly as if he were looking for someone, he stood on his tip toes and appeared to scan the room.

“I’ll be right back,” Ryan muttered after a beat, his eyeline tracing what appeared to be a second lounge that was more dimly lit just outside this particular lounge.

“Ryan, what—”

“Just one sec,” he murmured absently, starting to pick his way between people.

“Oh, sweetie; it appears you’ve got a _tear_ in your jacket.”

Shane was pulled out of his most disastrous thoughts when he felt a tug on his sleeve from somewhere below. He looked down at a tiny elderly woman with a Justin Beiber haircut looking at him with a rosy-lipped smile of derision. “Your _pocket’s_ hanging right _out_ , dear,” she said in a very particularly sonorous way that a few people looked over at them.

Shane shook his hair back and blinked very slowly at her as if his eyelids were weighted down with money. “Well, _someone_ missed Tokyo Fashion Week 2020,” he drawled delicately and felt a vindictive satisfaction when she drew back, her smile falling slightly. “The clothes were on Zoom due to all the _unpleasantness_ so the models had to walk up their cheap kitchen floors. It was _truly_ remarkable,” he shrugged with one shoulder and blinked with imaginary eyelashes like he’d seen Sza Sza Gabor do once.

The bartender placed two martinis on the bar and Shane took an express pleasure in holding his just so by the stem; the way they did it in _Cocktail_. When he turned back, he had a little bit of an audience, which was fun. It was much easier to be a ridiculous person than to try to blend into a place he knew he had no business being. He would never see these people again, he was sure, and something about that truth was oddly freeing.

“ _Now,_ one of the models wearing the jacket—styled after Ingrid Bergman from the 1965’s film _The Yellow Rolls-Royce_ —” Here he gestured loftily at a few people who had glanced up at the word _models_ as he perched on the barstool behind him. “—of course you all know the one, I’m sure—” He was starting to sound like a Kennedy. “The model caught his pocket on the corner of his kitchen counter— _some_ people trim their kitchens with metal, did you know?—and of course we laughed at him. Loudly. Fashion shows are usually so loud of course but this exclusive one was silent except for how loudly we laughed at the model. It was a hit. Now everyone who’s attended the virtual fashion week _insists_ it’s a mark that you received an invite if you were there to see the _Ingrid_ jacket _tear_.”

“Oh…” the woman replied, by way of course saying that she hadn’t understood a word, but he was receiving a few caviling looks of appreciation and reluctant interest. “You must be one of Bill’s friends. I’ve...never seen you at a Resnick dinner, dear.”

“Mm, Bill,” Shane mumbled, taking a long quiet sip of his martini as she waited a little suspiciously for his reply. Resnick? Shane wracked his brain; the name rang a bell but he wasn’t sure. It could be any of those names you’d see on a Forbes list or something. “No, no, I’m uh, I’m the Resnicks’... _stylist_. I styled the wedding.”

The woman’s creased eyes crinkled further. “... _Wedding_? What wedding?”

Shane’s palms were already sweating but he felt it more so when another hand, hot and soft slinked around his. He turned at the touch, almost pulling away. He stopped when he saw it was Ryan, sidling up next to him with a startlingly possessive squeeze. Shane stared at him, stunned, but Ryan, a little out of breath with a sheen of sweat on his forehead, looked down at the little old woman in her sequined number. “He’s just bein’ funny, ma’am,” he told her in his most affected Country accent. Ryan’s go-to. “I apologise. My, uh, br— _husband_ spent the whole quarantine in Cancun and the sun got to him.”

Surprisingly, the woman’s insipid blasé returned and she looked off and away. “Mm, I don’t like to talk about all that now it’s over—” she sighed.

“‘Course, ma’am,” Ryan smarmed with ease. A real lady pleaser, but his eyes darted up at Shane’s, fixing such a look on him. Still in character maybe; strange in a moment of interaction as his smile quirked up, mischievous and warm to his role. “Do you mind if I borrow him for a second?”

“Of course,” the woman returned, shifting the trajectory of her ivory-topped cane as if disengaging entirely.

“C’mon, _Rolf_. I wanna see the terrace,” Ryan murmured, tugging at him cajolingly. Shane felt a little strange euphoria creep up over him, insidious and hungry, as he let Ryan pull him, their fingers interlocked, across the lounge under bright crystal lights and the piano playing a ragtime rendition of _Bad Guy._

|*|

“ _Rolf_?” Shane prompted when they were steps away from the other lounge. They were in what Shane had to assume was something like a billiard room.

“I was watching you give your funny little monologue.” Ryan disentangled their fingers and led the way down a long hallway peppered with artistic photos of some Eastern European city. He lowered his voice as a couple near the other end parted ways. An older woman with a wide red-lipped mouth and brown hair wearing an off-the-shoulder cocktail dress kissed the man on the cheek and turned and walked into another room. “...You just looked like a Rolf to me,” he replied after a moment, watching the man enter what looked like a home office. “Might be your long hair…”

Shane grinned. “So you decided to play Rolf’s husband to get me out of the room?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “I had to think fast and a bunch of people were clearly listening to your story. I didn’t know what else to do, and I almost said brother but I couldn’t think why you and I would be related—”

“Ryan, it’s fine,” Shane broke in. Something about the concessions pouring out of Ryan’s mouth reminded Shane of the old panic of a guy who used to talk like the act of being heterosexual was under threat. “I’m not—I don’t think you secretly want to be married to me.”

Ryan was dead silent and Shane couldn’t look at him.

The lights in the garden had been turned on and it was pouring pale streaks across their path. “So,” Shane began by way of changing the topic with convenience. “Who the fuck is a Resnick? And why was that lady surprised to hear me say this was a wedding?”

“I never said this was a wedding; I said reception.” Ryan shook his head. “I’ll explain in a sec. Gotta make sure she’s gone.” They were at the end of the hall near the open doorway where the woman had gone. It led into a conservatory and Shane saw her take the steps at the end of the room back into the lounge, and Ryan reached out quickly and shut the door.

Ryan dug in his pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves.

“What’s happening?” Shane whispered, practically muted because Ryan glanced at him, looking all of a sudden like a scared rabbit as he put a latex-blue finger to his lips. Shane went quiet and listened. A murmur.

“...if the last two meetings were any indication of their current schedules, we can keep it up…”

A man talking on the phone. Ryan tugged Shane’s sleeve and took a step right into what Shane was now seeing was a study, wide windows decorated with gold trim and clapboard panels. There was a black-painted brick fireplace framed by long trailing gold-embroidered curtains and upholstery, then behind a large ornate desk, a white-haired man in a moss-green polo shirt sat in his wide-backed office chair, facing the window behind him.

“Mhm. Okay, then call me tomorrow,” the man was saying into his phone. “I promised there’d be no more business talk tonight so... Yes! Haha, all right. Talk to you then—”

That was all Shane registered before Ryan shrugged off his jacket and handed it to him. His sleeves were covered with a white mesh like a surgeon to go with the gloves he’d put on in the hall. Shane was sure his mouth was open as the next few minutes unfolded like a drugged out dream.

Ryan strode forward, a strangely predatory and unflinching walk as he raised his hand. Shane saw the brightness of the scalpel just before Ryan drew it in one swift swiping motion. He was sure he uttered a faint cry or a gasp—something as the man had just turned to put the receiver on the cradle—when the scalpel sliced a visibly clumsy line along the man’s throat. The split of his skin, the way Ryan’s oddly extravagant withdrawal left a streak of bright red along the surface of the man’s desk before the shock played in live uncomfortable relief all over the man’s withered features. He didn’t make a sound; he simply _looked_ at Shane before he collapsed, a slick layer of blood streaming down his chest, soaking the front of his polo.

Shane stared as Ryan stepped clear of the man’s body. There was a silent shock of a moment. Literal dead silence while Ryan gingerly placed the receiver on the cradle of the phone and even more gently, wiped the small trace of blood on his scalpel on the man’s shirt sleeve.

Then, and Shane had been waiting for it, Ryan looked at him. He expelled a long shallow breath like a person might after they’ve built a birdhouse. Satisfaction. Relief to be done, but proud of their handiwork nonetheless.

“...Who was he?” Shane finally said numbly.

“Him?” Ryan replied, eyebrows raised, nodding at the dead man. “This is the founder of an almond and nut company, _and_ the owner of privatized water reservoirs, which spends one point one gallon of Californian water for a single almond at a time. He is the exact reason California has been in a drought for over ten years every summer. He also hoards—or _hoarded_ —fresh water from the archipelagos of the Pacific just to sell it all back to Californians using the brand name _FIJI_.”

Shane’s jaw definitely dropped. He looked once again at the man’s balding white head sunk against his desk. He knew why he recognised the name. He and his wife would have been on nearly every Forbes billionaire list right under any other money hoarder’s name on the list. Primarily Donald Trump.

“Well,” Shane sighed. “ _RIP_ , ya know?”

Ryan exhaled a soft laugh as he chewed his lower lip, looking around the study. “I didn’t think we’d be in a closed room like this so we’ll have to leave through the conservatory, dip back out into the garden and go out on the camera’s blindspot; the way we came in.”

“Great,” Shane shuddered, looking at Mr. Resnick’s skin going steadily more grey as they stood there. Ryan had crafted this up so nicely; it was beginning to make him feel a little sense of what Ryan must have meant when he used to say that his anxiety gave him visions of every potential terrible future. “Good, yeah...”

Ryan’s smile was a new one, as he sealed his ziploc fully and stuffed it in his pants pocket. “I’ve been thinking about calling cards, you know? Something signature, but I need ideas...”

They were standing in a room with a dead body and it was really beginning to sink in to Shane that Ryan was _making_ conversation standing next to the man he’d just murdered. “Calling cards? Like the wet bandits? What are we—gonna flood their house?!”

Ryan snorted, opening his mouth to retort but then his eyes widened as his gaze fixed on something behind Shane. Shane felt the fear lick up his spine, touch every inch of his skin with cold as he whipped his head around. He only caught the sight of a man turning on his heel to run down the hall. The seconds raced as Shane looked a fraught panic back at Ryan whose face looked exactly how Shane felt in that moment.

“He saw us,” Ryan breathed.

It felt like a switch in him blew a heat right through his body, a shaking generator triggered by the actual devastated terror in Ryan’s eyes, scalpel in hand, suit blood-splattered.

Shane dropped Ryan’s jacket and ran.

It was a much younger man in a sport jacket who’d seen them. He was bald, but possibly only a little older than Shane. It occurred to Shane how true it must be that when people are terrified, their legs don’t work properly at a breakneck run. The man had tripped and fallen, not down the hallway but into the conservatory, panicked breaths leaking out of him as he picked himself up after another sharp stumble that had his hands planted on the expensive tile floor. He got up and twisted, torn between running in terror at Shane’s pursuit and the inevitability of what it meant if Shane reached him. Both prospects were foreign to Shane himself because he didn’t exactly know what he was about to do or why he felt so bent on doing it.

The man lashed out, with a panicked yell, finally able to fully get up when Shane collided with him. He got Shane in the chest with a not-so firm blow with his elbow and slipped out of Shane’s grip when he began to tear off toward what appeared to be a hall table for something.

Winded, Shane used his own weight and reach to his advantage and grabbed the man’s jacket to pull him backward as he staggered. Somewhere off outside the world of this awkward pseudo-struggle, he heard the conservatory door shut behind him and his adrenaline jumped into action. He didn’t think as he threw his fist up and in a too-wide circle forward, not entirely sure why he shut his eyes in a flinch when he did it. He felt his knuckles connect with soft flesh and the man let out a terrible pained yelp.

Shane collected himself, opening his eyes reluctantly. The man stumbled into the rickety side table, grabbing the side of his head

“Shane, you hit him in the ear!” Ryan exclaimed from the other door he was sliding shut as he wriggled back into his jacket, oddly observational in a moment of pure panic.

The irritation and embarrassment just fueled whatever Shane thought he was doing to begin with as the man managed to yank the drawer open and withdrew a handgun equipped with a silencer. His teeth were bared. Shane leapt on the man, crashing a sharp jab into his solar plexus before resting his knee on his arm. He heard rapid stumbling footsteps come from behind, but it was only Ryan hurtling forward to fall right beside them. His expression was stone cold though his movements were shaky and desperate. He reached out and pried the gun from the man’s hand as Shane leaned his weight forward against the man’s struggles.

“What do I do with him? Fucking....what do I do?” he shouted and he could hear the sound of the party not far off, louder somehow than it was before. Someone else was going to come in soon. They were going to get caught, and Ryan would go down for everything. Fear like acid ground through his throat as the man’s struggles became more frantic, true human strength stretched to its limit in self-preservation. His wide eyes were fixed on Shane, terror and a base animal instinct in the blast of his black pupils understanding something hideous about Shane in those electric dead seconds before Shane himself could name what it was.

Then Ryan handed him the gun, and between the weight of it and the rising whisper of the world caving in around them, and the stark vision of the man’s eyes fixed on him, everything became suddenly terrifyingly simple.

He had never shot a gun before.

It was louder than he expected.

He also should have expected that a bullet entering a man’s skull at this proximity would be as messy as it was.

His brain must have shut down because Ryan hauled him up to his feet at some point. It felt like he was watching Ryan from inside a sink’s drain, distant and far away. He watched him take the gun out of his hand, unscrewing the silencer and hitting what appeared to be the safety and sealing it in his big ziploc as well. He watched how the pink of his mouth looked dusky rose in the contrast of the cling of blood to his dark skin. He watched Ryan look at him with this flush on his face, taking in the sight of him in that way of his, purposed by curiosity and honesty.

“We gotta run, Shane.” His voice sounded drowned out by the rising wave of the ring in his ears and the heat rising all over him like pneumonia. “Can you do that?”

He remembered nodding and Ryan’s firm, imperious tug on his arm, forcing his legs to move with the rest of his body.

When they reached Ryan’s car, it was pitch black out except for the beams of street light at the end of the parking lot. Shane was out of breath, his lungs constricted too hard that he caught himself against the trunk, sinking to his knees when they reached it. He sometimes ran, but never that hard, never at a full-tilt sprint like this. Ryan had got there before him and was leaning his back against the driver’s side, panting.

His mind felt blank, the thoroughfare of his thoughts was all cascading in strange boxes he couldn’t open at the moment as he tried desperately to get his breath back. He could feel Ryan looking at him but he needed a moment before he could say anything. His shoulders shirked up. His heart was hammering and it felt like it struck the inside of his chest in repeating and painful blows. He looked down at his hands because his whole body was going numb; he was sure he might be dreaming. It was the blood that made him utter a faint noise, a soft and shaky realisation of a burning in his veins just as he started to smell it, on him, on his face and hands. Viscera and the contents of the man’s head. The man he’d shot.

“Oh god.” He thought he’d spoken, not sure if that was his voice or not. It was voiceless, gasping, on the verge of asphyxiation.

He wasn’t sure when Ryan had come around the car. Distantly, he felt Ryan’s fingers on his jaw, sweeping a thumb across it, streaking a stain of blood on it. Shane gazed at him blankly; he seemed so far away, at the end of some tunnel, with the night spreading out around them.

“Hey, hey, it’s OK.” Ryan was gripping him, and the thin air around Shane exploded right into his lungs leaving him choking and light-headed. “Shane, I think you’re having a panic attack.”

Shane sucked in as much air as he could get; all he could smell and taste was the blood on his face, on Ryan’s fingers. Ryan let his lapels go and began to rub the back of Shane’s neck soothingly. Was this a panic attack? It didn’t feel right. His heart was racing but he didn’t feel the numbness or the sprawling scream of un-thought.

“No,” he mumbled, finally aware of the cool metallic sheen in the taste of the air, separate from the blood. It was going to rain. “No,” he said, his voice coming out clear and he realised Ryan was just holding him as if he were a set of parts held together by melting glue and his arms were the only thing keeping him from crumbling. “I’m fine. I—”

“You’re shaking,” Ryan whispered, his eyes were fucking melting brown, swimming with moisture and Shane felt the heat of his breath near his chin. “It’s gonna be OK—”

“Ryan, everything’s perfect,” he breathed thoughtlessly, feeling like his veins were singing and his skin prickled with every point of contact Ryan’s hands on him was awakening in him. He leaned down, revelling in the power of what he’d done, the invincibility of it as he snapped the unwritten line between them and pressed his mouth on Ryan’s.

When their lips met, it felt like Ryan's whole body responded like he was blooming. Shane froze at the sharp sensory overload; it really felt so completely daunting to kiss someone he was familiar with in all ways except like this. Maybe curiosity kept Ryan still, something finely tuned between them like violin strings, searching for a new possible melody connection. Shane tasted the texture of his lips, hot and full, and his brain flooded with an immediate euphoria and hunger.

Before Ryan could pull away, Shane raised his hands to curl his fingers into Ryan’s jacket to pull him up closer, marvelling at the ease and rough pressure as they pressed against each other like that was how they were _meant_ to melt together. Shane leaned back on the trunk as Ryan leaned over him, pulling himself up by his arms so the car sank a little under their weight.

It was the wordlessness of it; the way the separation between them, short abortive breaths between kisses devolved. Shane opened his mouth for Ryan, shuddering and trying so hard not to when Ryan licked into his mouth. Ryan’s arms kept his hips still like a vice as he panted into Shane’s mouth. He sucked Shane’s lower lip with a voiceless groan and Shane slid his hands down, felt braver than he ever had, gripped Ryan’s hips, smoothed under his jacket, their kisses getting messier and wetter as Shane tugged him closer, fingering the edges of Ryan’s pants.

He barely breathed, sealing their lips together, flicking out his tongue to flirt with the tip of Ryan’s. “ _God yes_.” He wasn’t sure he was speaking it; just thinking it. It was wrong for so many reasons, but the physical contact after months and months, and then _this, this_ for the first time, easy and hot and desperate, was amazing.

Ryan bit down, a stinging bite and Shane would do anything for that again; he growled low in his throat pushing up roughly against his firm body. It was like pushing against a wall. He’d love to fuck him right there against the car but that wasn’t an option. Not enough time, no lube, just not practical.

“We have to stop,” Ryan said, his voice so rough like Shane had never heard it before as he began to kiss down Shane’s throat, his whole body slinking down deliciously like he wasn’t going to stop at all.

Shane didn’t want to either and he grunted a little hopefully, leaning in, cleaving himself to Ryan as hard as he could, pulling his body into a taut bow. One of Ryan’s hands slid down his ribs, dragged it across the silky material of Shane’s shirt and under his jacket to the small of his back hauling him closer. Shane marveled a little at how Ryan fit perfectly in that spot under his chin, lowered as he was so he could press one thigh snug against what was clearly the shape of Ryan starting to get hard.

“ _Jesus_. Okay, we gotta...we _have_ to stop now,” Ryan repeated against the skin of Shane’s throat, before leaving a small stinging bite there. It made Shane curve against him, rubbing shamelessly against Ryan’s polyblend-covered thigh. “The park’s...closed. If someone drives by…”

He’d never felt so fevered before in his life and he was promptly embarrassed; he could have come like that with Ryan’s body pressed into him. Just the idea of coming because Ryan had kissed him back felt…

“Yeah,” he said finally, tremulously as Ryan withdrew. The smile was in his eyes, vague and questioning as he took in the post-disaster he’d left of Shane, terrible, unforgivable. Shane wanted to be kissing him again so bad.

“We’re covered in blood and possibly brains,” Ryan said, a laugh deprived of oxygen shivered out in the night air. He was grinning so smugly, cheeks pink and his lips all kissed out. He looked glorious. “ _Gross_ , Shane.”

Shane managed his wits enough to straighten up and snap as he moved for the passenger door. “You’re a full blown serial killer, Ryan. Don’t talk to me about gross.”

The way Shane thought Ryan’s laugh was actually beautiful, echoing off the walls of the park gates as he unlocked his car.

|*|

That had to be the thing about kissing someone you’ve been wanting to kiss for a really long time. The kiss could be perfect—hell, Shane could swear the air had been singing around them, a cool, fresh Californian relief to the way Ryan had felt in his hands, but it could all go cold in the aftermath of a long drive back home, the rush of the feeling of the gun in his hand, the torture of the thrill still hissing its way through his veins.

It hadn’t even been five minutes and Ryan looked too pensive for someone who had just been kissed the way Shane had kissed him. Shane already wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened or he wanted to say something, apologize ahead of time before Ryan gave him some long silences before patiently and kindly explaining that that it was a bad idea or worse, that he didn’t want Shane like that.

Shane’s practiced concessions and refrains of “I get it,” all already felt like ash in his mouth.

Ryan chose right then to reach over between Shane’s legs to open the glove compartment. Shane didn’t breathe until Ryan handed him a pack of wet wipes, then dug in his pocket for the big ziploc. “We’re gonna be in the city and someone’s gonna see you all covered in blood. Stick ‘em in the ziploc when you’re done.”

It was the first wipe of blood that kind of grounded him. The nasty stain of deep red and the way he had to scrape it off made him utter a faint noise of disgust. He was a little relieved when Ryan snickered because it meant he wasn’t getting pensive about the fact that Shane had tried to cop off with him only moments before. He looked over at him, a little discomfited to find him glaring off through the windshield again.

Ryan must have felt his stare because his eyes flickered over at him. “I’m just thinking,” he said as if reading the lane of Shane’s thoughts. “Who _was_ the dude you killed and why did he have access to a gun like that? It had a silencer. Definitely not the kinda weapon you pull out to ‘ _Stand Your Ground_ ’, you know?”

“Mm,” Shane said.

Why wasn’t Ryan reacting at all to Shane kissing him? Did it really actually seem to him like a spur of the moment thing? Like that was something friends just did to each other. For some reason, Shane thought about Roland and his thoughts plummeted deeper than he was ready for. Why was the thought of his not acknowledging it worse than if he had? It had only been ten minutes!

“We were only supposed to kill the one guy,” Ryan was prattling on as Shane tried very viciously not to scrape up words for his new personal thesis _How close is too close between two roommates?_ “It’s just that the extra guy coming in when he did _really_ surprised me; we gotta be ready for anything. We gotta start planning better for situations like that. Like you carry a weapon or something.”

“Mm,” Shane said again.

He kept reliving the way Ryan had sunk against him easily. He kept reliving the mire of ecstasy and the jumpstart in his veins from thinking about killing that man. Shane had then felt Ryan’s fingers on him and just _knew_ that somehow, in some twisted way, that the two feelings were connected and that Ryan’s mouth and body felt perfect in all of it. Shane dropped his head back on the headrest and shut his eyes, stifling a pained groan at the way he wanted to just ask Ryan to pull over so he could reach for him and have that again.

Ryan’s voice was getting more and more animated as they drove further into downtown LA. “But just think about it for a minute; it’s like we were heading this way all along. Batman usually goes after criminals, gangbangers, and thieves, but this is different. It’s unique. It’s what society really _needs_.” The leather on Ryan's steering wheel creaked as he squeezed it. “Just a relief from the greed, the assholes calling the shots who make it so we’re all living in fear right now, not in control; not able to make things better because we don’t have what they have; we’re not willing to sacrifice thousands of lives to do that!”

Shane didn’t open his eyes, but he knew Ryan had slowed to a stop at a light and was looking at him. “You got any weed in this car?” he prompted faintly. “I need to unravel a little bit.”

Ryan laughed at him. “I probably have something in my grinder. It’s in the backseat, but don’t toke up in here; we gotta get you in a shower first then we can relax and debrief.”

|*|

The tragedy of Ryan pulling into Shane’s visitor parking, grabbing a bag and practically leading the way to Shane’s apartment until they were in the door was that Shane didn’t want to get his hopes up about the shower thing; he _really_ didn’t but there he was standing in his own apartment hesitating just a moment too long for his own liking before walking into the bathroom by himself as Ryan started undoing his tie.

Shane took that shower, watched with a little bit of sharpened awe at the sights of the sluices of pink hot water swirling into his drain. Feeling a renewed disgust when he got under the showerhead and scrubbed more of it out of his hair. He finished up, feeling better physically but just completely mortified at the bitter child in him that saw Ryan sitting on his couch watching something on Netflix in a pair of sweats and one of Shane’s t-shirts, slouched and comfortable that felt nothing but a sour hurt.

“You only had tobacco paper so I rolled us a blunt,” Ryan said absently at him when he walked in.

Ryan was wearing his sweats as well and he’d folded them up to his knees whereas Shane’s Watcher launch t-shirt seemed regular-sized around Ryan’s arms. Shane shut his eyes, trying to turn his brain off.

“We can smoke it on the balcony,” he said.

|*|

It actually felt weirdly normalizing to be standing on his balcony with Ryan as he leaned backward on his elbows over the iron rail and Ryan perched on the corner by the glass doors, passing the blunt to him. They hadn’t done this since last summer and something in the air said Ryan had noted it as well. They were quiet, willing to be in companionable silence and from where Shane stood, he could see the soft relief of his features shrouded in the white foils of smoke as he exhaled. His mouth was a perfect “o” as he blew out the rush of dry bitter smoke into the light of the apartment above Shane’s.

The street below was as noisy as it ever was so he barely heard Ryan’s mutter of, “It’s past eleven. They had to have found them by now.”

“Yep,” he said, still holding his breath off his hit. “If you were right about those blind spots then we should be fine.”

“Most of those places have indoor cameras, so I made sure to look for them when I went to find Resnick. What I’m worried about is DNA. We can’t be traced since we’re not on the invite list and no one there even knew who we were. Rolf and-and his…”

Shane passed the blunt, watching Ryan gesture aimlessly.

“...and well, I had gotten to thinking about the way cops and detectives tend to keep the details of crime scenes quiet and I can’t _stop_ thinking about it. We’d never know exactly what they’d find so on Monday I kinda—uh, I got on some message boards.”

“Oh…OK, I’m afraid to ask, but...”

They were silent as Ryan took his hit, burning the cherry to the skin of his fingers. He put it out on the guard rail quickly before he smiled one of his reprehensible grins. “Just follow me.”

Shane’s limbs were already slow like they were filled with thick milk. The exhale that rushed out was like a sigh that took his very being out his chest. When they were inside, the warm air hit like it amplified his vision as if every still object in the room screamed instant colour and sharpness, smaller yet bigger than normal. The back of the sofa seemed to embrace him when his spine touched it.

It took him a full and solid moment to realise Ryan had crawled over to him on his couch with his Macbook open. His eyes were glassy but he looked quite lucid when he crossed his legs and balanced his Macbook on his knee tilted toward Shane. The only thing Shane registered for faint crimson seconds was Ryan’s leg pressed up against his for what appeared to be utility reasons, using Shane’s lap and his as a table of sorts as he used the mousepad, his arm fully resting on Shane’s.

“I used a VPN, don’t worry,” he said, scrolling through his bookmarks and pulling up a page with five backslashes before its domain. _WRM.tor. “Surfshark_ coming in clutch.”

Shane made a vague pirate noise almost absently, knowing it wasn’t really that funny, but he was rewarded with Ryan clutching the screen of his Macbook as he threw his head back in a truly resounding cackle.

“Can we _try_ to be serious for a second,” he said at last, smiling at Shane like he was—like he was really something.

Shane shrugged to be amenable even though his hope that the weed would shut his brain off had been a bad bet; he was thinking about it again. Maybe like what would happen if he just tipped the Macbook over and pinned Ryan by his wrists to the couch. How he’d accept Shane’s kiss the way he had only hours ago with that devastatingly instant response of his whole body; every brush of skin and cold fingertip touch. It kept coming back at Shane in flashes making the flush blister across his back and up his throat every time he looked too long at the shape of Ryan’s mouth.

It was harder to quash this bullshit when he was high. He felt like his brain was set on a scratched record, replaying the single eroded groove of the way Ryan’s breath had quickened on Shane’s, exhaling a “We should stop” when his kisses wouldn’t.

“So there’s this user MentosBS420,” Ryan explained, not even masking the new grin this brought out of him. “Obsessed with forensic science and he posts about this thing called maturation like he’s talking about fucking.”

Shane swallowed and wished Ryan would just kill him.

“Anyways, the thing about this guy is he and a few others started this network of murder crime scene candids. There’s posts here—” Ryan scrolled and Shane was successfully distracted for a good minute with the apparent photo roll cascading across Ryan’s screen then. “Dating all the way back to 2006. There’s coroners on this forum and actual first responders! And they fully just leak photos on here.” _Horrifying._ What looked like various close-ups of body parts, limbs, torsos or whatever, large needle bruises surrounding black punctures. Then something else caught Shane’s eye on the screen, as if his eyes were fighting the charge of the sight of the gore, dragged elsewhere on the screen.

“You...have an account?”

Ryan looked grim, still scrolling. “Yep.”

Shane looked at the screen again. Something was real stinky and it wasn’t the roaches in the little box Ryan had left open on his table. “How long have you had this account, Ryan?”

Suddenly Ryan looked cagey, shifting the Macbook more than slightly off Shane’s knee in that way he liked to withdraw and curl up like a dog when he’d been caught in a lie. “OK, listen, I didn’t want to freak you out but—”

“I watched you kill a man.”

“— _but_ _maybe—_ ” Ryan was gesturing like he was swatting several flies out of the air around him. “Possibly—I’ve been on this forum for a year—”

Shane couldn’t believe this shit. “ _Ryan._ ”

“I was _curious_! They had a bunch of photos from the house where Jimmy Hoffa potentially died. I heard about it when I was reading _The Irishman_ trivia! So I bought the dark web program from Aria last year; he practically gave it to me and I, uh, made an account and maybe I check the updates now and then when there’s a particularly crazy murder.”

Shane twisted in his seat, facing Ryan as he rested an arm on the back of his couch. “Look me in the eye and tell me last week was your first time killing someone.”

Ryan’s eyes were so wide, but his jaw set as he fixed a look back at Shane. His eyebrows curved up as he replied, “That was my _first time_ , and it was an accident. I’m not—I wouldn’t lie to you about _that._ ”

Something about the earnestness of the reply made Shane balk, suddenly the words coming out of Ryan felt naked and Shane averted his gaze by looking at the Macbook screen. “All right, fine; let’s just see if they got anything from today.”

“Shane,” Ryan prodded and Shane reluctantly shot him a sidelong glance. “You believe me right?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Shane returned more curtly than he intended to. “You’re a shit liar, Ryan. It’s why I don’t want the police asking you questions, _so_ —” he gestured at the Macbook.

Ryan seemed convinced at least. Shane didn’t know what he thought about Ryan spending all that time on forums like this; it was strangely enough the most upsetting aspect of all this. Like there’d been a curiosity eating inside Ryan fully played to fruition the moment that man had dropped dead in front of them last week. He watched Ryan’s profile as he clicked through pages he clearly knew very well; an expression on his face so familiar, drawn in research and fascination. Shane sighed once again, torn up with the devastation that he cared _so_ much that whatever downward spiral his warped little buddy was on, at least Ryan would let him follow.

“Hold on— _what_?”

Shane followed his gaze to the screen. “What is it?”

There was the conservatory, just as they’d left it. The remains of the man Shane had held a barrel to just splattered out there on the marble tile. He winced at the revelatory way it had been photographed, but forced himself to keep looking.

Ryan’s eyes were hurriedly scanning the semi-transparent caption over the gallery. “The second guy was his son, Bill Resnick!”

Shane was stunned. “Oh man, I killed _Bill_ ,” he could only mutter, thinking of the elderly lady’s passive aggressive disdain as she spoke the phrase “one of Bill’s friends…”.

“Shoulda used the five-point-palm exploding heart technique,” Ryan said solemnly.

He felt really bad when he snorted because that just made Ryan fully laugh. He was too stoned for this and they both laughed entirely too heartily at that. They were both awful people.

“Well, looks like we got the man’s successor!” Ryan gasped breathlessly while Shane wiped his eyes. “OK, so the caption says the victims were found at approximately ten p.m. by the staff. Most of the guests had already left but they’ve got the guest list from Resnick’s wife. No suspect as of yet but the coroner on the scene says he heard from the detective on-duty that traces of DNA _were_ found near Bill Resnick on a couple of _jelly bean_ s scattered around the body— _what?!_ ”

Shane wasn’t sure he heard that right. “Jelly...beans?”

It hit Shane then; the memory of his pocket tearing; Ryan smiling at him in the shade of the topiary, flushed with his leap over the wall as Shane had hurriedly transferred anything in his torn pocket to his working one. He must have missed something. Did he have jelly beans in his pocket? There followed a long caesura of realisation as Ryan stared at Shane, then giggled nervously in the register of a castrato.

“Did you... bring jelly beans to a murder, Shane?”

Shane sank deeper into the sofa, staring off into the middle distance; aware all too quickly that there was no mistaking it. He would have had those in his pocket from the Streamys; he hadn’t worn that suit since. “In my defense,” he replied very slowly as it sank in. “I didn’t _know_ I had been invited to a _murder_.”

Ryan set the Macbook on the table and buried his face in his hands. “Oh my fucking _god_ ,” he groaned weakly.

OK, so what did it mean? Shane wracked his brain for every little weak tidbit of trivia he knew about forensics, about how those would hit an evidence locker as they searched for a match at the party. He had had a drink, but would they have kept all the glasses unwashed and available if the bodies hadn’t been found? Even if they did, Shane wasn’t on the guest list and neither was Ryan. They would be investigating for days and days through that huge guest list, the staff, and if there was no trace of them on camera…

“It’s gonna be all right, Ry—”

Ryan interrupted him with a noise, muffled in his hands and coming off the sharp sound of what could have been a choked sob. It was the way it sounded that stopped him speaking. However, Shane realised very quickly even as Ryan’s body started to shake and even though the noises coming out of him were deep and sore with a tangible hysteria that it was laughter. Ryan was _laughing_ , helplessly, harshly as it shuddered out of him like he couldn’t contain it.

“Ryan?” Shane said slowly, and when he didn’t stop, again, “ _Ryan_?!”

Ryan’s head lifted, his eyes were soaked wet and his smile incredulous. He looked up at the ceiling, caught in blue-lit inspiration from the TV now playing a screensaver reel. He breathed deep and sighed, shaking his head. “I think…” he said softly, awed. “I think we just found our calling card, Shane.”

Shane paused, taking that one in. “Our calling card,” he said faintly. “You mean _jelly beans_?!”

Ryan’s next cackle was gleeful, stacked with all the enthusiasm he was capable of. “I was thinking we’d do something like draw an eye on them—for Watcher—or like something to do with any of our series, ghosts or something. Don’t you get it? This isn’t _Batman Begins_. This is _Boondock Saints_ and we’re serving retribution to men who’ve made the world the rotten place it is.”

“—which one of us is gonna be Willem Dafoe then?”

“These dead men are destroying the planet, actively suppressing progression that doesn’t benefit their capital—” Ryan paused mid-gesture, squinting at Shane. “OK, wait wait wait, we _can’t_ be Willem Dafoe; he was the detective trying to catch the McManus brothers.”

“Movie just doesn’t age well,” Shane mumbled.

Ryan grinned. “You can do the conducting thing, if you want.”

Shane committed. He shut his eyes and waved his arms in slow motion, plastering a blissful smile on his face with his eyebrows quirked, and he reveled in Ryan’s raucous laugh then and how quick he was to imitate Shane doing it, full of giggles.

“Right, so the dead men are history winners,” Shane said at last, smiling at Ryan’s over-the-top arm sweeps as he cottoned on in the worst way while the entire empirical analysis of Ryan’s manifesto was coming to him. “And they get _jelly beans_.”

Ryan reached out, a full palm grip on Shane’s knee, an affirming gesture he hadn’t done since early in the year. He was quiet in this oddly unified moment as his smile went soft and Shane watched the dance in his eyes.

“You really get it,” he replied softly. “It’s crazy how you just always _know_.”

Shane dropped his gaze immediately, burned by the plaintive veneration in Ryan’s look at him. His eyes darted carefully for the television, then the floor, and then back at Ryan again. The issue was there, plain as day for Shane, a hot curl in his stomach telling him to try it, to see if Ryan would slide a hand along the fabric over his thigh before climbing him if Shane leaned in. Shane wanted to make it a joke, say something soft and funny but he couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound desperate and sad.

A simple “Can I just kiss you?” louder than a gunshot reverberated through his brain just as Ryan’s expression changed, observing what he saw cross Shane’s expression, a tender read followed by a blank eyebrow quirk as he squeezed Shane’s thigh one more time and pulled away.

“Well, we’ve got a Steven meeting at _nine_ tomorrow. Mind if I just crash on your couch now? I gotta be up at five so I can go home and change.”

Shane felt the wave of cool hit him, all down his front, _vibrant_ rejection. It set off something in him that had prepared quietly and cravenly for moments like this. “Yeah, for sure,” he said, getting to his feet chipper and lightly. “Need a blanket?”

“Mm— _oww_!” Ryan yelped when Shane tossed a folded throw blanket at his head. “Asshole,” he giggled into the cushions as he rolled over.

Shane didn’t answer. He shut his bedroom door with a snap, hating how toxic he felt.

|*|

It was nice to be in bed, sliding into cool sheets and to plug in his phone, but there was no way he was going to sleep right away with Ryan in the next room. Not even considering for a moment that they’d had something happen bigger than anything they’d done together before. Shane didn’t even really know what he wanted from Ryan physically; just that it felt _wrong_ that he hadn’t kissed him.

Shane _hated_ that.

He was lying in his own bed, comfortable as anything, but he was done for because he would just as easily have crawled into the open space between Ryan and the couch, curled up around him in any way he could manage.

It had just never been this complicated wanting someone before. And Shane wanted simple so much more.

 _Simple_ could be the way Ryan fit in his space. When he’d stretch out on his stomach those few times they’d share a floor on location. Simple was the curve right at the bottom of Ryan’s spine that made Shane’s palms itch. Simple was the way his fingers felt, tugging and strong, an insistent clutch on his arm that made him imagine it wrapped around him as he pushed a hand into his shorts.

It _could_ be simple; the heat of Ryan’s skin when he flushed with laughter always brought Shane stupid little thrills; from the moment they’d met to now, he’d been inconvenienced with wanting to do that to him again and again. Simple was even Ryan’s mouth, curving and somehow always open saying something passionate and sharp-tongued, eating absolute garbage and really, the only complication was that Shane just wanted to feel the burn of that mouth on his.

But _wanting_ all of it for himself should have been simple, too.

It certainly felt more simple with his eyes shut, a grip on his dick, starting to breathe bright and fuelled by a few seconds in a parking lot, by tentative imaginings of where they could have taken it. Restlessly, he turned over on his stomach, dragging one of his pillows under his crotch, scraping silk up the head of his dick until he crumpled a little.

That was good. He thought of how it’d feel to push up against Ryan. If Ryan would use his hands or his mouth or if he’d watch Shane closely, scraping fingers in his hair and eating the pained pleadings that’d come out of his mouth with kisses. Ryan would probably want more, want Shane to spread for him, put his fingers inside.

“Ah fuck,” Shane hissed into his blanket.

He started to rock harder, twist his hips as the head of his dick pressed promises but not enough into the pillow; he felt hot and tight and like maybe his skin wasn’t enough to contain him, like he was going to just shed off the whole thing when it got too much. Heart thundering and his dick jerked, bobbed, he could feel the press of himself leaking wet all over his stomach as he dug in deep enough that his bed creaked, and it was close. Close like a word on the tip of his tongue, but just out of reach.

Shane moaned wetly, pressing the sweaty side of his face into the sheets. The angle was all wrong and he was feeling not so much out of his depth but a lack of depth and it was frustrating. Empty.

Then—just when he was about to give up—he pictured how Ryan would glance at him guardedly, liquid hot brown eyes smouldering a cigarette burn right through him. Shane just _wanted_ him. It refused to be like any other type of want where Shane would find it not only convenient and perfectly logical to just run away from it when it got sticky. He was craving this a little, comfortable in this nasty solitude of his fantasies. Any other time, it wasn’t someone he had to see every day; at any other time, he wasn’t avidly crossing things out on his schedule to make sure he’d be able to _keep_ seeing him every damn day.

God, at this rate, he’d follow him straight to hell.

There it was, the bleed of that earnest vow. Shane scrunched his eyes shut, letting the sensory of his mind crawl into the touch of his fingers. He could hear Ryan’s voice like a glimmer soundtrack, echoes of his own breaths on him and the carnal, half-baked visions in his mind of the two of them entwined somehow, rocking together as Ryan’s palms gripped right into his skin.

It was like the crest of his orgasm invited the dream right in as he passed out, spent. He saw watercolour memory, fogged with details so faint he was only aware of concepts. However, then it was the same street in LA, but this time he took off at a run because he knew the thing following him was coming at him at the same pace.

His dream self ran until it felt like he was floating, so hyper-aware of the lack of feeling in his bones, breath. None of it was real except the fear, and he couldn’t switch that off here. Not with the tickling crooked fingers touching just at his bare calf, scraping along his cheek in a black sprawled silhouette on his periphery.

The alleyway again.

Shane hit a wall and he twisted around to look for the end of it, but where the alley was meant to open, there was only another wall covered in more graffiti, all spelling out the words _Down, Down, Down_. The creature was on its feet, ambling toward him in the blue dark. It felt like his eyes couldn’t open all the way for him to see it properly. He tried and tried but all he could see was the moisture on his eyelashes as his eyes refused to open and the watery prism of the creature without eyes of its own advancing at a sleek pace, claws open.

Roots that looked like the creature’s fingers vomited from the earth, like slippery claws scraping trails toward him and Shane nearly tripped over the edge of one to get to the other end of the alley. The creature without eyes still followed at his own stroll, but every muscle on it was taut with fury. Shane was on his knees, pushing dirt aside as the black, wet branches started to inch like worms over his wrists. Instinctively, he kicked at it so it toppled and a peeling shriek began, a chorus, deafening and cold, each branch splitting into several and still crawling towards him.

Shane yelled when he woke; he could hear it in the empty ring of his bedroom. A smart echo and the pain in his throat from trying. He sat up and looked around, touching at his wrists to make sure there was nothing there.

His phone read seven-forty A.M. and when he got up to go check, the couch was empty; Ryan was long gone.

|*|

It was a week later at the tail end of a Friday afternoon. Shane had his headphones on and was scrubbing through VO for their pilot of _Weird Wonderful_ when he happened to glance up at Steven who was looking down at his phone, while visibly speaking to the room which consisted of Shane, Ryan, and Anthony all equally invested in the idea of finishing most of their work before the weekend started. Anthony didn’t look up and neither did Ryan, so Shane pulled off his headphones, looking at Steven askance.

“...at least so the articles are saying.”

“What’s that?”

Clearly his movement to sit up and pay attention to Steven caught Ryan’s attention because he looked at Shane first, then at Steven before pulling out his airpods.

Steven barely glanced at either of them. “I was reading—there’s this whole thing on the New York Times about that crazy jelly bean murder.”

“Jelly bean murder?” Ryan echoed like someone had come along and grabbed him by the throat. Shane caught his eye for a brief millisecond and he saw the sharp panicked, gleeful look on him transform in real time to what Ryan probably thought was a trained disinterested stare.

Steven didn't even see any of that. “Yeah, the murder of Stewart Resnick and his son is going viral because jelly beans were scattered on the crime scene, but this is what’s on the news. Apparently, Lynda Resnick is sick after losing her husband and stepson. So their shareholders and partners got away with not honouring some kind of contract and The Wonderful Company—I guess that’s what they were calling it—had all its divisions split and sold for its shares.”

“So what does that mean?” Ryan demanded, leaning right over his monitor from where he was standing. Shane looked at him. The guy really had zero subtlety.

Steven shrugged, yawning as he ran his fingers through the back of his own currently blond hair, eyes still fixed on his phone. “Not sure. The investors apparently wanted a bigger cut of the more successful divisions between—OK, just listen to the list of these companies—FIJI Water, Wonderful Pistachios and Wonderful Almonds, Wonderful _Halos_ , _JUSTIN_ Vineyards and Winery, Landmark Vineyards and Winery, JNSQ Wines, pest control company Suterra, flower delivery service Teleflora, a _sea freight_ company Neptune Pacific Line and an in-house marketing agency Wonderful Agency. Lynda’s lawyers are trying to fight it but...oh ha ha, I see people on Twitter freaking out that FIJI Water is tanking first—well, by freaking out I mean making memes. There’s something here about privatized water...ha ha ‘ _me drinking FIJI water out of the local pool’_!” He gave a soundless laugh at whatever image came with that one.

Shane saw out of his periphery Ryan shift his weight from one foot to the other impatiently. He clearly wanted to ask more questions but was also worried about looking too invested, which was a moot point given how hard he was staring at Steven and also how it didn’t matter at all whether or not Steven thought he was too interested.

What, was the FBI gonna burst in and interrogate Steven Lim specifically about how deeply his company co-founders were invested in the state of the stocks in almonds and pistachios?

Shane sighed and asked, “Wait, why is FIJI water tanking?”

Steven looked up. “Uhh...sorry, I started reading something else. One sec. Oh, OK, here’s a thread on Twitter. Yeah, the shareholders saw the split and thought the partners were mass-selling so they unloaded stock as well and the whole division tanked seconds after it became a company on its own two feet. _Woww_ , can you imagine that? All their privatized reservoirs in Fiji and San Francisco are for sale for dirt cheap—”

“Anything in the budget for a Watcher reservoir?” Shane prompted. He glanced at Ryan who was not paying attention and felt a little wilted.

Steven didn’t laugh either but he did offer Shane a palliative smile before saying. “If we buy a reservoir, we _can’t_ buy Ryan’s Valentine’s costume for Too Many Spirits.”

Shane was on the verge of a laughing philosophical reply because that was truly a hilarious thing to say when Ryan twisted on his heel and walked briskly for the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. Anthony looked up at last at the slam with a brief expression of simple observation while Steven made a wry noise.

There was no waiting long enough to follow that wouldn’t look weird anyway so Shane simply got up and did so.

When he opened the door, Ryan was bent over the running sink, his hair and the front of his t-shirt collar was wet. He looked at Shane in their reflection as the door shut behind him, and an exasperated smile pulled at his lips as he switched off the tap.

“If shit hits the fan,” Ryan announced solemnly, “it will be a comfort to know you’ll be there. In the next cell, possibly.”

“Why are you saying this now?” Shane laughed.

Ryan turned and swung himself up to perch on the small space of counter available beside the sink. “You really do just _follow_ me everywhere.”

Shane stopped short like he’d caught a blow to the chest. He watched Ryan as he reached down and just dried his face with the end of his t-shirt distractedly. Shane’s mind was racing in their silence; words dropped in and out of his mouth but he couldn’t make himself say them because they were all questions and Ryan looked more frustrated than Shane felt.

“I was just…” He couldn’t make the words come out right. How was this fair right now?

Maybe he really shouldn’t have agreed to any of this in the first place; maybe Ryan was done with him pressing and pressing, and it wasn’t fair because Shane didn’t really know any other way to let Ryan know that all he really ever wanted was…

“It’s just that you’re not—” Ryan began again, knuckles white as he leaned his weight forward on the edge of the counter, swinging his legs fretfully. “Shane, we’re going _viral_ right now. That thing we did last Wednesday is all over Twitter; that’s more than I could ever have managed for us at Buzzfeed and I just thoughtlessly asked you to do this with me just like everything else.”

“It wasn’t thoughtless, Ryan,” he began. “I mean we went to that party together—”

“I was supposed to do it without you, though! I was gonna keep you out of it, leave the room, follow and kill Resnick then come back to you, but I got to the hall and just felt—it was so selfish; do you think I put the gun in your hand because I couldn’t do it myself? I wanted _you_ to kill someone—wanted to see you do it because I felt like it would make us—felt like I was breaking some kind of promise if I didn’t when we never—you never...”

Shane folded his arms and walked over to the counter, cocked his hip against the counter’s edge on the other side of the sink and regarded Ryan with a renewed feeling of concern. “Ryan,” he said; his voice felt so loud echoing off the bathroom’s tile that he lowered his voice, charged with the enemy in his chest thundering louder than he could speak. “Ryan, the way killing that man made me feel—”

“Oh, I _know_ ,” Ryan looked at him, brows curved in. “I felt that and I _know,_ but...”

They weren’t going to talk about the kiss or how easily they’d almost...

“So,” Shane gestured a vague lift of his arm, looked around the tiny bathroom for something to focus on besides Ryan looking pained and a little frustrated with him. “What is this about? What do you want?”

“Well, I want _this_. I want the feeling I got just now when I felt like we’d changed the world. And we are, those sacks of shit are dead and _we_ _killed_ them, and I want more and it _scares_ the shit outta me.”

Ryan sat back against the mirror, his hair crushed up in his reflection and he gazed at Shane like he was forcing himself to keep looking. Shane saw himself in the mirror, a deer-in-the-headlights fear on his face, and he hated that Ryan could see that.

“I want the same.” The words practically had to crawl out from behind his teeth. “And if you need me to be in a cell next to you, I’m already there.”

Ryan’s surprise at his reply and the way his eyes darted off; that damnably beautiful smile like the shy cloy of Autumn’s first. Shane knew this was no brightly-lit confession under a sunset or an oath made over lowballs of Bourbon under the sweet-smelling floral wreaths in New Orleans. They were in an office bathroom under staid fluorescent light. Shane thought of saying it right then, telling him that the way killing felt paled in comparison to what he knew Ryan could do to him.

The moment bloomed, as Ryan looked back at him, seemed to be reading Shane’s eyes, one at a time, right to left and back to right, then it withered as Ryan’s eyes softened, something calm and exasperated.

“It’s just that I _don’t_ want you in the cell next to mine,” he said at last. “Not if I can’t trust that you really want this for you and not for me. You’re always just…”

“I’m always just _what_?” Shane demanded. Ryan had to know; he had to guess what this was.

Ryan sighed. “What I’m saying is maybe this is your chance to get off the train.”

“Wait a minute—”

Ryan hopped down off the counter. Something coiled, hot and rubbery jumped from Shane’s chest to his throat once Ryan’s round eyes slid from somewhere distant over to him; an oddly timed challenge curled the corner of his lips into a knowing smile. “I just want you to know you don’t owe me a thing. The world out there is so evil and so _rotten…_ ”

He brushed past Shane and offered a last moment clap to his back. Shane stumbled into the counter unintentionally, caught himself, aware that Ryan’s other hand had come up to hold him still and steady.

He didn’t look Shane in the eye when he said, “Just not _you_ though, OK?”

Ryan left it like that. A stunning and affectionate pronouncement blanketed with the careful and clear boundary he was laying, and Shane had to turn and face the sink, bow his head as if he were busy looking for something down the drain when Steven walked in only seconds after.

He was deathly afraid of the face he was making.

|*|

It felt like a break up. Not that that was really fair because Ryan was still around; they could still talk; still had jokes and work to share. So it was worse than a break up, then, because something in Ryan seemed liberated. He laughed and smiled at Steven’s and Anthony’s jokes again like he had been worrying so much altogether about what it meant that they were in this secret together. Then when Katie came for a last drop off of supplies for their Monday shoot and to debrief, Ryan suggested they all get dinner.

Shane couldn’t help it. He was miserable especially because it had been _this_ secret that made him confront the thing inside that had been whittling away in his stomach since the first time he saw Ryan in person again, and worse, since they made physical contact.

And there began the spiral. Maybe it was because Shane had kissed him; maybe it was that he knew full well how Shane felt and was letting him down as gently as he knew how. There was something deeply cruel about that, too. He knew he had no right to demand a straight and direct rejection when he had never said anything in the first place.

It ate him inside out.

He went home earlier than everyone else; ignoring the open invite for everyone at dinner.

When he walked into his empty apartment, his thoughts were black, eroding, and jagged. He opened the door, kicked off his shoes blindly, and shut the door behind him. He drew into his living room and began to pace; he started to remove his jacket—threw it over the back of his couch in a sharp gesture—walked a line up and down the room

It felt like his whole body was done up in taut wires where his nerves were; he was tense and he was starting to breathe as if he were trying to cough up something coiled inside his lungs. It was nearly sunset and his entire front room was orange with the receding day and his eyes shut against it. He only opened them to walk around his couch, to look helplessly around at the empty room.

He swore then, bitterly and voraciously. Loud enough he was sure his neighbours heard it.

He heard his text ringtone, and realised he’d flung his jacket off with it in his pocket. Shane looked at his phone and it all sagged out of him. He dropped right where he was standing on the ottoman end of his sectional.

Ryan had texted. _**Where are you? I’ll buy you dinner. Steven said he’ll drink with me if you show up!!**_

He could text back some excuse or he could just be honest. He started typing, not backreading his own words as he went first-thought-best-thought with it and he watched the window of his message grow and grow. He apologised for kissing him; he told him he was fine and that he understood. How he appreciated that Ryan had shared all that with him, that it meant seeing everything and that he supported his decision to set boundaries between them. All just glossy stuff that didn’t touch on the bigger, brighter thing eating Shane from his gut outward.

It was that now he’d had a taste of Ryan’s everything, he didn’t think he could go back.

That was so toxic; that was…

Shane hit the back button and watched every word skid out of existence. A good long paragraph of lies he wasn’t going to use to assuage the thought of Ryan knowing he was hurt.

He opened his Twitter to just read something that wasn’t Ryan’s words on the screen. More post-election noise; valid takes he would usually want to read a whole thread for. He was just about to slouch back on his couch fully as he got into reading a long potentially hilarious argument between two of his old friends from Schaumburg when he sat up fully and zeroed in on one image. It was some bald Lex Luthor-looking fella sitting on a leather armchair looking sheepish and pleased and above it was the caption:

**End Stage Capitalism be Like:**

Followed by the title and description of an article with the headline. “ **J _eff Bezos opens homeless shelter for Amazon employees_**.”

Shane felt it boil in him. Ryan’s contemptuous tone. “ _To the detriment of others,_ ” he’d spat like he meant it. Jeff Bezos was one of those people who Shane had seen only in words and the occasional thinkpiece on climate change, but what he had seen more of were the statistics.

Shane curiously opened Instagram, searching for the man’s page. Why was the guy even trending?

It seemed upon giving a wooden-worded endorsement on social media for Biden knowing he had the insurance of owning forty-percent of all e-commerce in North America, the man would sit there on his billion dollar empire watching the people building it commit suicide, and his response was to write a scathing email to his other company chairs about how the journalists exposing him are simple and stupid.

And then, according to an overworked and underpaid waiter on Twitter, cut the hours of an already suffering industry so he can throw a private extravagant party in Newport on a docked giant yacht.

Shane thought of Ryan in the bathroom today, looking at him with so much concern and sympathy, like he felt Shane hadn’t been with him all this time and it got him wondering and wondering.

 _I want the feeling I got just now when I felt like we’d changed the world._ Ryan had declared to him and in the next minute told Shane to stop following him. It didn’t make sense.

He thought of Ryan’s last look at him after telling him _I just want you to know you don’t owe me a thing._

He stared at Jeff Bezos’ smug, wealth-hoarding face, and felt it unspool inside him; something blistered and rotten he didn’t like to entertain. He entertained it now, zeroing in on it in a way that procrastination felt like. A desire to avoid feeling angry with Ryan because he was. So angry. And he couldn’t do a thing about the fact that Ryan had been standing in that bathroom waiting for Shane’s reply and got nothing and then told him point-blank he didn’t want him.

It took Shane all of twenty minutes to find what he needed on Virtual Globetrotting and another fifteen or so to get changed, pack an old messenger bag with what he needed, and get out the door.

The streetlights started to flicker on as his car hummed down an expressway, stone blue early winter evening bathing everything in a sombre dress. The streets were cobalt at this hour and the glaring city lights ran a long zig-zag over his peripherals as the car purred on over a highway. It seemed very odd without the radio on and the car heater’s hum filling in for it, swelling each pin-prick of his adrenaline. Shane could hear his own fingers tapping on the gearshift, but everything else felt simply warm and irrelevant.

The lines of the street went on and on, white stripes disappearing underneath the hood as Shane stepped on the gas. If he cut it right above the speed limit, he could ride eighty-five to ninety and clock an even thirty minutes to his destination.

It was a little after seven when he pulled toward the Balboa Peninsula. Every search on his google maps said the docks themselves had been closed for an event, which was apparently the gripe of the waiter on Twitter. That worked just fine for him. It was better if no one was allowed in at this hour.

Shane hadn’t come here since he first moved to California. Nothing had changed much since, which was a bigger relief. Maybe it was the way the chill in the air felt more clean by the ocean, but Shane felt like he could really see things at last. He shouldered his bag and left his car parked behind a closed Jack in the Box and crossed the highway on foot. He was banking on the cafe restaurant being open at the very least, even if the pier was shut. If it was closed, he was going to have to go around the cabana and climb one of those scaffoldings, which didn’t sound like any fun.

The lights of the Balboa Pavilion were all alight thankfully. The Harborside Restaurant was also bereft; chairs and stools flipped and packed on top of tables with only the low-hanging lamps on brass hooks and their soft yellow light spotlighting and pooling over the naked cedar wood floor. Shane put on his face mask as he crossed the vestibule.

“I’m afraid we’re only catering to a private party tonight, sir,” the host said by way of greeting. He took in Shane’s dark face mask and get-up, white silk shirt and his blue slacks, as he said the words. Shane, for some reason, thought of Ryan and his god-awful Ricky Goldsworth bit.

He took out his wallet. He didn’t usually carry cash but he’d had to stop for gas back in Fountain Valley and didn’t wanna risk it on his statement. He reached out and tucked the folded fifty-dollar bill in the host’s shirt pocket. “I’m just on my way home and my assistant recommended this place for its best martinis. That won’t be a problem right?”

So he was fully a martini guy now; he just couldn’t be stopped.

“Oh,” said the host, looking around like he was hoping no one else saw that.

“Thanks,” he said quickly; shortly, starting to walk for the dining room entryway. “Tell your bartender I’ll take my gin martini at the last booth near the windows. Tell ‘em I want it with dry vermouth; dirty, got it?”

He was starting to sound vaguely movie-Mafia goon so he stopped speaking, didn’t wait for a reply but instead weaved through already cleaned and sanitized booths to the sharp brisk ocean air flooding the backdoor. He looked out the wide windows overlooking a long dockyard where there would usually be a bunch of different little sailboats and yachts. Tonight, there was only the one.

He pulled his phone out, checking the waiter’s Twitter profile for any updates on Party Bezos. Someone had replied to the initial tweet with a picture! One of the caterers from the restaurant he was currently sitting in had taken a photo of the man. There were roughly four other people with him in the photo. Jeff was having a drink poured for himself while the other three were picking at a buffet spread.

“Here you go, sir.”

Shane quickly covered up his Professor popsocket last minute as he realised the host himself had approached. “Oh, thank you of course. That’s great,” he wittered, accepting the tall martini.

“So, just a reminder, sir; the restaurant is not fully operational—”

“Yes, yes. I just need, uh—is that your bathroom?” he nodded toward the swinging door near the Exit sign.

The host hesitated but nodded and Shane stood up, taking a quick mouthful of gin under his face mask before popping the olive off the toothpick into his mouth. “I’ll be right back. Refill, if you please.”

The host looked startled and worried. Shane had got lucky with this one; he wouldn’t have known how to put on an irascible character that fast when someone was yelling at him. He walked toward the banquet hall bathroom with his messenger bag, looking down at his phone so he had an excuse to walk slowly. When he got to the door, he turned around as if he were backing into it, but he watched the host leave the table with a very dramatic sigh.

Once the coast was clear, Shane pushed his bag into the bathroom door and pulled out his old Starbucks apron, threw it on, then reluctantly unearthed the ziploc Ryan left at his place, letting it roll out of the plastic into his hands. He shoved it in his apron pocket and kicked his bag under one of the stall doors, then dipped back out not even pausing before he cleared the exit, twisting the door handle and flicking the door-stopper up to keep it from fully closing. His heart was pounding so loud he could hear it in his ears, clouding out all the noise of the gulls and the harsh hum of the sea.

The staircase led straight to the docked yacht towering as high as the actual building. Shane speed-walked up the gangway. He stopped short at the first rail entrance and peered over the hairline view.

He saw a few people sitting by a hot tub. Three women—uncomfortably young-looking—and four men. None of them were Bezos. Shane climbed the rest of the gangway steps and walked up the promenade toward the front of the ship—the port?—keeping a tight hold on the handle of the gun in his pocket because the feeling of the weight of it slapping against his stomach was making him anxious.

He just couldn’t make himself breathe normally; he kept holding it in at random intervals and that made him shudder out sharp, shaky exhales whenever he slowed. He had to psyche himself up; he didn’t fucking know what he was doing but he was kinetic with purpose, every alarm bell telling him to get out of there ringing in his brain, but something in him had him still walking until he passed the windows in full view of the people by the hot tub. He was wearing his face mask and an apron so he could pass as one of the waitstaff at first glance.

None of them looked up, but he held his breath as he ducked into the cabin. There was the buffet from the photo; just platters and platters of leftover shrimp cocktails, charcuterie, a large cheese wheel with a hand-held wire cheese cutter, and several bottles of re-corked wine.

Clearly the party had evolved with the other seven people all carousing by the hot tub, but no Jeff. Shane knew absolutely nothing about the layout of a billionaire’s yacht but he knew there had to be private rooms in the back and it made him nervous to slip in deeper where it would be harder to make a quick exit. At least it would be easier to mask the sound of the gun.

 _God, the gun_.

Shane didn’t like it. He kept picturing what it was going to be like; the full impact of what it had felt like the last time. Tasteless, quick, explosive. It was messy. What was he going to do? Shoot on sight? He’d have to aim for the head and he wasn’t sure he could even do that at a distance. He didn’t even fully know how the silencer worked or even how to undo the safety. He hadn’t even checked the bullets. This was so stupid, stupid, stupid.

Shane sighed, pushed the gun deeper in his apron pocket and picked up the wire cheese cutter. There was no logic to it really, but Shane figured if he could tie the billionaire up first, maybe he could shove a pillow over his head first before he shot him.

It got even darker as he reached a flight of steps, but there was a streak of light slipping through the crack between the doorframe and the wall. Tentatively, he reached for the knob and turned. Shane walked right into a master bedroom. The floors were coated with a white velour carpeting and the windows were open to the night under a low LED-lit ceiling flooding a wide California King with bars of gold.

Over by the closet, there he was.

What was that old quote? That there was a universal emotion everyone could recognize and hadn’t named—which was the gleeful anticipation of being able to feel contempt.

That was Shane walking into the room, seeing Jeff Bezos, multi-billionaire with over five-hundred thousand underpaid workers under his currently bare feet—crouched in a very mundane posture to put one foot through the leg of his swimming trunks.

Felt strange to catch someone like that and not immediately duck back out. Shane tried not to overthink it as he let the other handle of the wire cheese cutter drop out of his fingers. The man was simply sliding into a pair of swimming trunks and heard the shift of Shane’s clothing. Shane was already around the bed by the time he turned and Shane would remember a little later the brief look of surprise on his face before Shane swung the handle.

Bezos toppled quickly, right against the mahogany doors of the closet, reeling from the blow of the handle to his face. Shane didn’t touch his gun; didn’t want to; didn’t need to. It came like it was a prophetic dream to him—the act. The absolution of it. Bezos slammed his fists against Shane’s chest, elbowed and thrashed. He was built like the rumours said and Shane was sure one of his ribs almost caved in, but he’d had the element of surprise. The guy fought so hard, dug blunt fingernails into Shane’s forearms, but Shane was just simply taller with a longer reach and quite clearly, more conviction. The billionaire’s fingers slipped across the wire just as Shane wrapped it around his neck. Shane felt the splatter of blood come too quickly and he blinked it out of his eyes.

It was the way he looked up at Shane in those last seconds, panicked, afraid, lost, and despite the fact that they were together in these seconds—bloody and bruised—they were both alone. Shane thought of the accounts, people crying as they talked about making ends meet, trudging through the day; the cold-blooded ads, the sickening smugness on his face when he appeared before congress, and the way even this, this moment clear as day in a momentum of terrible acts committed would never heal the disease. Bezos gurgled out a scream for help at last just as Shane tightened the wire.

Shane wished Ryan could see this.

He pulled the wire by both handles, intended for a clean break hopefully...

“Ohh fuck,” he groaned only a moment later. “ _Ughhh_.”

So he didn’t think that one through, clearly. Bezos’ body collapsed on him, but his head tumbled down Shane’s thigh and bumped quite cleanly against the closet doors. Shane’s heart stuttered and tripped arrhythmically, and if he wasn’t so afraid of moving he would probably have vomited. Spooked and a little sick, Shane forced himself to scramble up. His shirt was once again slathered in blood and he was sweating like crazy. He pulled off his apron and quickly wiped any blood near his mouth and the little he could feel clinging to his eyelashes, tipping Jeff Bezos’ detached head out of the way to get the closet open without touching it. He grabbed the first thing he could find to cover up his bloody shirt, which just so happened to be a button-up cashmere sweater.

It took entirely too long to dig around in his apron pocket for the last thing, but it was worth it for the sight of a brand new pack of jelly beans spilling open all over the mess he’d made. Something in it reminded him of being a kid again, pulling a string of his mom’s pearls and breaking her lipstick. Disaster in creativity as natural as breathing.

Finally he pulled out his phone, and took a quick photo. Inadvisable obviously, but it was worth it for this bit.

Shane pulled the sweater on over his bloody shirt as he took the stairs down practically two at a time and leapt into the lounge with the buffet and ducked as he came to the large cabin windows facing the hot tub. The buffet was still neglected and the party was still in full swing outside. Not a single soul wondering about their host.

Shane slowed his walk as he replaced his face mask and simply strolled toward the promenade, swinging himself over the rail a little to hurry down the steps. He slid in past the door-stopper and practically leapt for the swinging bathroom door. He was blessedly relieved to see his bag still sitting in the stall. He checked his phone. That whole mess had taken roughly thirteen minutes. There was no way the host wasn’t going to be suspicious. He could hack this; people in Newport used cocaine all the time and there was no way the host would want to come check on him especially if it meant needing to confront an overbearing drug addict with money. He shoved the bloody apron and everything else in his messenger bag and quickly glanced at himself in the mirror.

Blood in his hair; streaks of it across his jaw and more of it on his fingers. He swore and switched on the tap. He was very careful to use paper towels, soaked and folded to wipe at most of the blood so it wouldn’t splatter anywhere, then tucked all the soiled paper into a new ziploc bag. Would hate to give some NBC primetime-esque detective a field day.

He was aware he didn’t get it all especially in his hair so he wet it a little, slicked it back and exited the bathroom with his now much bulkier messenger bag and walked the length of the banquet hall until he was back at his seat where a still-cool second martini was waiting for him.

Shane sank into the booth, not fully able to relax but at least grateful to swallow a big mouthful of gin and vermouth. He pulled his phone out again and was confronted with the photos when he unlocked it. He hit ‘share’ and opened the cloud he and Ryan had shared back during their Unsolved days.

“ _ **Put that on your dumb forum.”**_

He deleted the photos afterward. The thought of Ryan’s reaction made him smile in spite of himself as he tucked his phone away and finished his drink still carefully under his mask.

The host had begun to hover, but Shane needed to make a big show of his being there memorably without their seeing his whole face. He paused between sips and when he made eye contact with the host, he’d raise his glass. It had to be past nine-thirty when he left, dropping another fifty on the table for the poor host. Most expensive trip to Newport for him to date.

His phone started vibrating when he slid into his car. Ryan had texted him. _**What did you DO? Where ARE you???**_

Shane replied **. _Getting on the train you kicked me off._**

He was aware it was bizarre how angry he was. Maybe the adrenaline was alive in him too deep; his hands were steady on the wheel but he could feel the sweep of his nerves sizzling alive every time his heart slowed a little and it only made him panic more. He could be dying; he didn’t know. Rational thinking and its requirements notwithstanding, Shane was biting his lip frenetically and perhaps pressing his gas pedal a little too hard.

It wasn’t even about hope or just letting the pieces fall where they may sort of thing. Shane wanted him to see sense and wake up because it was supposed to be just about Shane and him. He wasn’t deluding himself about what all of this had been so far; he couldn’t be that blind, and now this horrible wonderful _thing_ they’d discovered together and Shane loved it; _god_ , he loved it in ways no one else was ever going to understand.

Because it was right; it was just, and it felt like waking up.

Halfway up the driveway, Shane had already argued with Ryan in five different made-up scenarios. There was no perfect result to any of these said scenarios except that the idiot would simply _know_ how Shane felt and then...

So then…

Shane rapped on the door, loudly and decisively like he knew if he’d allowed himself the minutest form of hesitation he could still turn back.

Took so much time for a response, which was all the more agonising. He should have said he was coming over, pulled the whole “OK, bonehead; we need to talk; for _real_ this time,” spiel.

Shane gave up waiting, tried the door and just walked in. He saw the kitchen light on, heard the television and strode down the hall for it.

He was there, leaning against his kitchen island, staring at his Macbook in an expression of faint awe.

“Where are your roommates?” he asked stonily. He wanted to make sure they were alone.

Ryan looked up when he saw Shane and lit up. “They’re not home. You really fucking did that, huh?”

Shane was breathing so hard. Of course Ryan wouldn’t be surprised to see him. Of course, he knew Shane would come. “I used a cheese cutter.”

Ryan spluttered delightedly, resting his cheek on his hand propped on the counter. “Like a _wire_? You _garrotted_ him; judging by this photo, that’s a pretty clean cut.”

Shane crossed the room, drew close enough to see Ryan was looking at the photo enlarged, a very close inspection of the bleeding gap where Bezos’ head once sat. “Make sure and delete that,” he said.

Ryan twisted from where he leaned, resting his elbow back on the island to look up at Shane. “What did it feel like? Probably better than a tidy throat slash. You gave him the _revolutionary_ treatment...”

“I felt it in my arms, like this strange release. Felt like the soothing sound of the wire was in my own spine. Like I was the weapon.”

Ryan exhaled and his eyes beckoned; his smile was a flash of steel. “Oh, you’re a weapon, all right, big boy,” he said softly, without apology.

The blur of the television; news reports and music bled like the whispers of the world meant nothing. Shane breathed in and watched the way Ryan’s head tilted back when he stepped closer; licked his lips as his chest under his tank top rose and fell.

“Shane,” he said.

“Yeah?” His voice wasn’t working. All he could think was he was going to put everything he was holding down because his hands had to be full of Ryan in a second or he’d explode.

“I should go to bed.” Ryan twisted on his heel, shut his Macbook and seemed to be about to head for the living room. “Steven booked us for a meeting at eight-fucking-thirty, the madman—”

Shane pulled the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder and head in one agitated gesture. He threw it down. “What do I gotta do, Ryan?” The bottom of his bag split open as it hit the floor, the wire cutter still spelled with blood clattered between them on the tile floor. “What the _fuck_ do you want me to do?”

Ryan simply stared and stared. The television blared a singsong ad—a familiar cadence already outliving its novelty. The initial surprise in Ryan’s expression very slowly faded, replaced too easily by a burgeoning smile as his eyelids shaded. He shook the curls of his bangs out of the way in a reckless tic of a gesture as he regarded Shane with one of his very specific looks. The one he got right before he meant to ruin Shane’s entire day.

“You’d have to _ask_ , Shane,” he said at last, so matter-of-factly. “ _That’s_ what the _fuck_ you need to do.”

Shane blinked, the fury seeped right out of him all at once because Ryan straightened up, his hands fidgeting a bit before becoming fists at his side. A rehearsed sort of anxiety like he’d just been waiting for this, for Shane to pop like this.

“What.” Shane said it like a statement because he’d heard him fine. He was so out of breath.

Ryan licked his lips nervously and took the three steps from the kitchen island to the hall where Shane stood. He was purposeful about it, as if fully aware of the boundary he was stepping clean over. “Last time you were all covered in someone else’s blood and looked at me like that, you kissed me without asking.”

Shane could have bit his tongue with how fast he clamped his mouth shut. Oh no. He folded his arms, then unfolded them, backed away. “You knew? All this time—when you spent the night— _today at the office, you just—_ ”

Ryan let out a faint exasperated laugh. “Don’t start to look like that; _obviously_ I knew, but see that’s a problem— _our_ problem: I get to ask you to do things for me _all the time_. I don’t need to get into the long laundry list of things I can count on you for down to—to what batshit thing you’ve gone and done tonight…just because you want the same things doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt that you don’t ask me for them.”

His tone on the end of his words had transformed, cracked. Shane was in pieces already. He brushed his palm over his face vigorously, hoping to clear the cells in his head. “Ryan, that’s not fair,”

Ryan looked properly furious then. “It’s not _fair_ to expect you to _talk_ to me?”

Shane was pretty much backed into the wall. “Well, how was I supposed to tell you all the times I almost kissed you; how am I supposed to assume that you would want me to—and then I _did_ and you didn’t wanna talk about it!”

Ryan sighed, frustrated; a little defeated. “You... never actually brought it up.”

“Oh, come _on_ , Ryan. All those moments: the night of the Halloween party, the night after the Resnicks, all those times in your car, and in the bathroom today, we could’ve talked about it; I could see it on your face—”

“I was waiting for _you,_ numbskull! How am I supposed to know what you want if you never _tell_ me?”

Shane took a deep breath; he was too angry for what this was about; too worked up. He could feel it like a burn in his stomach and chest. Heartbreak. “What if what I want is too—” The simplicity of it; the toxic selfish demand in it; completely illogical. “God, I can’t even say it.” He felt wretched about it, the inflamed mortification in his bones

“Listen to me.” Ryan drew closer, one hand slightly extended; whatever he could see on Shane’s face was making him approach like he would a sick angry animal. “You’re the only person in the world I would ask for the things I’ve asked from you…I asked you to walk away from your job for me; from a _murder_ for me; I put a gun in your hand and you killed someone to protect us. How could this be any worse?”

Shock perched in his bones in the same frequency as hope.

Ryan stepped right into Shane’s space, his tone low with every fibre of demand. “...And if we’re gonna keep going like this, I want _everything_...so I need to know what this is to you.”

The words felt like an oil spill. Shane stopped breathing.

It could have been rhetorical but Ryan was breathing in his space, taking every ounce of Shane’s oxygen. Shane wasn’t sure what it was Ryan thought he was gonna say; he was in a pool of fear, concerned that he was asking him for truths he wasn’t confident enough to commit to. “Ryan, what good is wanting someone to want me back if I’m asking for it like it’s some… some sort of—I dunno—tax collection for being around you,” he stated and his gaze drew away because he couldn’t deal with the temerity in the curve of Ryan’s frown.

“So you do want me?” he asked. His voice was small, light; he didn’t look up at Shane, long-lashed stare downcast.

“Ryan…”

He could feel the pads of pressure through his sweater, inching across bruises he knew had formed since his struggle with Bezos.

Shane was panicking again. “What if we try it and it’s all wrong? What if it turns out you don’t really want—” What if it became obvious very quickly that Shane needed and wanted him more than Ryan was ready for?

“You think I started this because I’m not _sure_?” Ryan whispered like he’d read Shane’s mind. “Everything else about us fits right, Shane; why shouldn’t this?”

It was hard for Shane to swallow at that moment and he felt like pureed flecks of burning coal were swimming in his lungs as he let out a long, deep relieved breath. Why did killing fill him with enough conviction; a lawless courage he’d never touched his whole life more than he could put into words for Ryan, for himself?

“I want you.”

 _That_ smile reappeared. It was the kind Shane couldn’t quite find the right comparison for. It didn’t remind him of TV personalities or ads on perfect teeth. It made him think of warm invitations, decadent and pink-lipped; provocative in just the way precisely that it had motivated Shane to cross the entire state of California to kill for him so he could come right back to him.

“Can I kiss you?”

Shane watched Ryan look rapturous; in the crazy jagged list of things Shane would do for him; it felt strange to watch him light up for this.

“Thought you’d never ask,” Ryan said, firmly delighted at his own choice of words and the sight of Shane starting to lean in.

Ryan’s lips parted, opened under his tongue, gliding it over Shane’s; soft, slack-mouthed encouraging sound when Shane’s coat slid off and he had the moist heat of Ryan’s skin grazing him through his shirt. Shane experienced an instant lightning awe at his own quivering and the strength in Ryan’s rough grip on his lapels.

Ryan’s tongue pushed like he was trying to lick something out of him, dragging against the underside of Shane’s, digging in a bit softly in a thrillingly invasive way, expert-like. He kissed like his personality, all in a rush, curious to see just what he could do to Shane and how badly he’d want it done. Helpless, Shane turned to putty, fingertips—nails raking up Ryan’s spine, heart hammering at the little shudders that Ryan put in him.

Ryan’s thigh pressed the seam of his pants against his balls. Shane was fully hard in several dizzying seconds after that, enough that he wanted them out of the way. Shane tore off the cashmere sweater where it and his layers were pressing against the bruises on his chest.

He bit at Ryan’s lips harshly, mauling him with his tongue, as they both scrambled with the buttons of Shane’s blood-dried shirt. It was clearly ruined and some of the buttons were pulling; the whole thing made it more difficult because Shane wouldn’t let go of their sloppy kisses long enough for either of them to look at what they were doing.

“Why’re you wearing so many fucking clothes?” Ryan whined and Shane could barely call the sound he made a laugh; it was so twisted in his chest.

Eventually, Shane got the last of the buttons undone and flung the thing aside exposing his flimsy t-shirt underneath it. Ryan was already tugging at his belt, jerking his hips forward with each rough tug.

He was dizzy from it when Ryan’s hand drifted up the front of his pants. Shane braced himself, meeting Ryan’s stare; so dilated and black in the grey morning; white almost as it crept over his features; a cold light, but hot with intent as Shane felt Ryan’s fingers both on his shoulder blade and the other set tugging slowly at the button of his pants. Shane positioned himself so still, bit the edge of his own tongue because if Ryan actually touched him, actually curled that unguarded hot hand around him, he’d come right then and there, and it’d be over.

“Come on,” Ryan urged, not nearly as cautious, fingering the width of Shane’s hips as Shane helped tug his belt off. “Come on.” It wasn’t a whine but a demanding sound pitted deep in his throat, ground out like shattering glass.

Shane couldn’t answer because Ryan managed his fly too easily and shoved his hand down Shane’s pants, circling straight for his cock, a choking grip on the base of him. “ _Ohhh_ ,” Shane uttered faintly, shutting his eyes, biting his own tongue again to quell the stupid notion that Ryan only had to touch it to make him come.

All the air rushed out of his lungs, everything inside went tight. He pushed his own pants down those precious few centimetres, just low enough on his hips that they were out of the way. Then Ryan was wrapping his too-dry, too-hot fist around his dick and Shane jerked, pressing up into it with a small sound.

“Like that?” Ryan breathed, eyes all loose, like his swollen mouth. He sounded so smug. Shane leaned forward, bit down sharply at his bottom lip, something swelling inside him at the surprised sound Ryan made.

“Yeah,” Shane panted as Ryan drew his thumb across his lip, dipped in around his kisses until Shane opened his mouth for him again, sucked greedily and thoughtlessly. He shivered when Ryan smiled at him.

Ryan huffed a wry laugh against his shoulder, resting his forehead there for a moment, out of breath, but saying barely anything except, “God, Shane...you’re so fucking...”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Clasps, fingers dug a little too hard, breaths got harsher. Shane tried to keep sanity in it while he slipped his hands into Ryan’s sweats, heel of his hand applying pressure on the shaft of his cock before he closed his fingers around the head.

Shane trembled the moment he got a real feel for the thickness of it in his palm, how it twitched over his fingers. Something about it, fragile and silk to the fingertips made Shane think of all of Ryan, spaces he hadn’t gotten to yet, clinging wet and desperate against him. Oh, he wanted to fuck him, ride him, something, whatever; just get him spread him out on the bed all a delirious mess so he could rock against him.

Ryan was surprisingly quiet, a depth to his exhales that Shane found more erotic than if he’d been whining and moaning. Shane wanted all of it though. He wanted to see the tension in Ryan’s demanding hands now cupping the sides of his throat, holding him still and hovering over his lips. Shane wanted to see him fist up the sheets; to make low cadent noises with that beautiful voice of his. He felt himself spring out, naked in Ryan’s hot fist. He had to pull away to gasp, hiss while the grooves of Ryan’s palm skirted up his shaft under a deliberately light play of fingers.

Ryan was unabashed in his pleasure, whimpering against Shane’s tongue with each time they made exquisite contact. Ryan started to buck harder into the funnel of Shane’s hand, chasing his own insistent pace of friction, staccato breaths jumping out of him over Shane’s mouth as he lost all inhibition. “That—right—like that,” he gasped and Shane nodded, eyes sliding shut as he started to rock with him. He gripped tighter and had to reach behind Ryan and plant a hand on the wall when he felt his stomach start to clench.

He must have closed his mouth over Ryan’s for a brief second on the beginning of one of them seething a slurred groan.

Ryan only withdrew to breathe off their kiss, shuddering out a truly terrific groan as Shane managed to fit them together, pushing himself into the small space between Ryan’s cock and his palm just as he felt Ryan go taut and his teeth clenched against Shane’s jaw.

“Fuck, _fuck fuck_ ,” Ryan broke out through it like he was about to fall, every muscle on his arms and back threaded with his heat as he came on Shane’s dick. Shane watched him, couldn’t help staring. When Ryan came to pieces, he looked shattered, emptied, and perfect all at once, mouth going slack, rattling with his gasp, whole body quivering into a splayed mess in Shane’s arms.

It didn’t take long for Shane to keep touching him; he dug his fingers into Ryan’s hips pulling him close so he could grind against the jut of his hip. It felt electric; he whimpered at the sensation, helpless to stop himself from humping Ryan standing there in his front hall.

“Bedroom?” Ryan muttered filthy-hot against the curve of his jaw as they both breathed fast in the wake of a kiss.

He couldn’t even crack a joke; he was empty, his whole self scooped right out replaced with only a single-minded want.

“Yeah,” Shane said, tugging Ryan down the hall towards his room, stumbling under sloppy and misfired kisses. Ryan seemed to be more than okay with this because he was laughing and tugging Shane right back; his favourite game Shane never played with him. Not physically.

A framed picture crashed to the floor when Ryan pushed him against the doorway to his room, pinning him there with his wider shoulders, up on his tip-toes. Shane couldn’t find it in himself to protest, clinging to Ryan and groaning out loud as Ryan sucked kisses down his throat, hard little stings clearly already marks.

They fell on the bed like that sideways; Shane on his back as Ryan worked his tongue into his mouth and Shane sucked like he imagined he’d let Ryan fuck his mouth. It hurt a little when Ryan took his lower lip in his teeth, but each slow suck on his bottom lip was going straight to his dick, he could feel himself leaking against the fabric of his briefs.

“You’re amazing,” Ryan breathed against his hair and Shane hummed, rubbing his hands down Ryan’s naked back, wriggling until they were all tangled up and touching as much as he could, silky skin and soft hair and wet lips—Ryan’s hands all over his hips then gripping his ass. His fingers dug deep and parted and pulled the muscles of Shane’s ass so he felt nothing but slipping, hard contact of cotton to the sensitive skin in his crease. “Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”

Any other time the prospect would have flared up every anxiety in him, but the image was already in his mind and he felt the possibility like it was already happening, like Ryan in all his fantasies would have been if Shane had given it the smallest chance.

“Do you think you could fuck me? Even if it’s just your fingers—”

He was looking up at Ryan saying those words, taking in Ryan’s sudden mystified smile.

Heat flooded up his face. “I mean, that’s not—if it’s too soon to—”

“Shut up, Shane,” Ryan cut across him. “I’ll be right back.”

It was both worse than he imagined and relieving; the break in contact as Ryan got up off of him and left the room. Shane fell back on Ryan’s soft blue duvet and caught his breath, staring at the ceiling, his skin screaming sensitivity. Even if Ryan didn’t want that, it would be OK. He thought it might be easier than if Shane had asked to fuck him, but...

Ryan re-entered, brandishing a comedically large bottle of lube. “Gotcha, pal,” he said smugly.

Shane crushed his eyes shut. “Ryan, I don’t care if I have to beg. Don’t tell me that’s _the household_ lube.”

Ryan cackled and did a bit of a jump so he landed on Shane's legs at a straddle, laughing a little more at Shane’s grunt of protest. “Then I won’t tell you,” he laughed, knowing he was possibly the sexiest thing Shane had ever had sitting on him and perhaps the one person on earth who could _really_ make Shane’s skin crawl.

“That’s so gross; I can’t believe—”

It didn’t matter in moments because within the space it took for Shane to come to terms with the bitter truth, Ryan had him crushed up in his kisses again. Shane shifted his knee further under Ryan’s thigh and meant to murmur what was inside him right then but it came out a muffled groan; doused in paralysis because Ryan’s other hand finally reached down, worked a finger under his zipper flap and raked a hard line against the metal teeth, wrote a single ache up his erection. Shane shuddered; even bit his lip to hold back his own need to fold Ryan over the end of the bed, wrap himself in him, thrust hard into welcoming, flexing heat and bite his own desperation into the round, stiff skin of Ryan’s shoulder from behind him.

It was then that Ryan’s hand slipped back into his pants, tickled damp fingers over the top of his dick, and Shane sobbed Ryan’s name and felt that nearly tip him into a groaning bliss. It was an instant, caustic, and perfect reprieve, and Shane growled into it, rubbing his cock over Ryan’s palm, trapping him between his zipper so they were only a shaking, curled up form as one, barely capable of doing anything else.

The angle was weird, and his shoulders ached from holding himself up, but it was too good to stop now. He just grit his teeth and pushed his hips up into the grip that Ryan tightened suddenly. Everything went from a tease to too much between one breath and the next like biting into a lemon.

Shane took a shaky breath and rode it, trying not to squirm too much or let loose the whines he could feel building in his chest, breathy little desperate sounds that he didn’t want Ryan to hear in him.

Ryan dragged his hands to Shane’s front, slowly tugging his pants down. Shane shifted under him, gasping his encouragement as Ryan finally finished stripping him. Ryan caressed like love with his lips, leaning over Shane to taste his skin. He shivered when Ryan twitched and slipped his fingers along the tender edges of the skin around his balls.

Shane gripped the edge of the bed with one hand, the other in Ryan’s hair as Ryan dropped wet kisses over his hips and his warm, now slippery fingers squeezed, massaging hotly. Those same fingers traced the inside of his thigh, rushing down his perineum and Shane’s knees bent for him, heels digging into the mattress with Ryan’s hot, burning breath feathering over his thighs.

He felt the cool tingle of the lube being spilled just over his scrotum and Ryan smeared it, kissing the inside of his knee as Shane drew it up. He pressed one finger, making a crescent over Shane’s rim, stretching, more lube pooled before Shane felt it slipping inside him. Ryan twisted his finger so Shane felt his knuckle graze sensitive edges and he arched back on the bed, whole body stretched and scraped thin like a sandwich spread.

Ryan pushed another two fingers in quickly, another dollop of lube, coating his rim, wet slick fingers scissoring, running a hard stripe through his core. Shane choked on a throaty moan, shoved right out of him.

“Am I doing this right?” Ryan asked, more rhetorical so Shane could hear the smug dripping off his tone.

“The fuck you think…?” Shane sobbed, palms almost slipping off the end of the bed. Ryan exhaled a voiced sound, laughing but clearly singed by the sound of him begging. Shane already knew he couldn’t get tired of that.

Ryan pressed his forehead to Shane’s chest, digging in deeper and spreading his fingers so his middle finger rushed up harder. Shane cussed out a sharp expletive, gritting his teeth and going numb all over even as he bent himself into it in a wanton motion.

“ _So_ ,” Ryan said suddenly, against his hair; his voice was loud after their long tentative silence and the slick sound of wet skin. He rolled his wrist in slowly so Shane had no chance to do more than wiggle, trapped there in a surprisingly strong hold. He was so sticky and feeling limp, too-hot and covered in his own precum. “Got a question for you.”

“Huh...?” he mumbled dizzily. Their chests were clinging together front to front, Shane’s breathing evening while Ryan’s hitched with tiny gasps he wasn’t at all afraid to let Shane hear. Fingers pressed deeper and it wasn’t enough but the pleasure hit him like a bolt, and he moaned, pressing up and into it. Desperate for more, searching for that touch that would finally end this new torture.

“If you could kill someone you know personally, who would it be?”

“Jesus Christ, Ryan!” Shane’s voice sounded steady against the too-fast thrum of his pulse in his ears. He had the distinctly base feeling that there was something just wrong about discussing this while he was getting off. He should probably be offended, but...

He grunted. Ryan let out a coaxing breath close to Shane’s ear, and Shane shivered, swallowing down a sudden flush of heat.

“ _Obviously_ we can’t kill anyone we know, right?” Ryan murmured. Shane gulped thickly— shocked. He shook his head, feeling Ryan’s chin digging into his clavicle even as he did so. “So I’ve been wondering who's in your favourite murder fantasy—if you say it’s me, I’ll kill you.”

Shane made a distressed sound half between a laugh low in his throat. “Fuck, I don’t...” he mumbled. Of course he’d thought about it. Ryan would know he had and would have planned to ask him right this second. “God, I hate you,” Shane whined faintly.

Ryan hummed approval. “Oh, that bad, huh?” he coaxed.

They were sticky already, clinging together and Ryan started thrusting faster, fingers of his other hand so tight around Shane’s cock. Shane bit his own lip so hard he was sure he was tearing it. Ryan scissored his fingers in him, and then curled them up, struck a spot that tickled like an itch he couldn’t reach and Shane felt the world spin, shocked, shuddering into a peal of sounds through his teeth.

“Ah god,” he whispered, covering his eyes with the back of his hand. The thought that Ryan was looking at him while he was just flying apart at the seams.

“Almost there,” Ryan pressed whispers into the dark cave between Shane’s shoulder and the mattress under them. “Come on, big boy, I want to hear you say it.”

At Ryan’s words he rocked faster, mindlessly hoping to please him as he used his legs now wrapped around Ryan’s hips to push harder. Ryan held all but his hands still and concentrated vividly on meeting Shane’s thrusts with the position of his fingers, seeming to savour in some way the way that Shane was convulsing on him.

Shane groaned pitifully, begging him in hoarse, broken strings of, “Please, please, please....”

Ryan rubbed him from the inside again; this time slower, harder while he appeared to want to watch the twitch of Shane’s expressions. Mortifying. Then Shane was struck when Ryan paused, having to go still as a pleasured shudder raked over him. That was beautiful and Shane felt like he was going to come from just watching the way Ryan looked, wrapped up in giving pleasure, and how it felt to be teased by him because everything fragile and full in Ryan was slicing right through him.

“The sooner you tell me, the sooner I’ll get you off,” he said, his voice that achingly scraped up growl, rough near Shane’s ear.

“Wh-when— _god_ —I think about Roland touching you, or just thinking about you—”

“Oh, this oughta be good,” Ryan coaxed. Shane was going to have a stroke and that would be the end of it, Ryan really would have killed him with sex. This was so different than how it felt in the kitchen; this was like trying to run a marathon with his feet tied together, words stuck in his throat.

“I...wanna—I wanna push him into traffic; I want to shut him up forever; cut him and watch him bleed out—anything to make him _go away_ —Ryan, make me come,” Shane groaned. “Please.”

He could almost feel the smile that was pressed against his neck. “You can’t kill my friends, you psycho.” He laughed like a slow lazy fuck, smug as ever. “What, you don’t want me to have anyone that isn’t you?”

What Shane _wanted_ was to be able to come like this, just with Ryan’s fingers pressing up and—oh god—so far inside and rubbing and moving and stretching him so full. The delicate edges of them were oddly roughened by plucking clumsily at guitar strings maybe, and the ever so faint press of nail when they pulled all the way out and then back in.

Shane shook his head as he rolled his hips to get it fast and hard. “I hate it, too, I know. I’m sorry. I’m not—I would never—” Now Ryan would know he was toxic and—and—and...

“Shhh,” Ryan whispered, cutting across him. “Shut up, you idiot. I love you.”

Shane kept his eyes shut as he turned his face in over Ryan’s lips, letting Ryan kiss him breathlessly. Shane couldn’t kiss him back because he simply couldn’t _think_. Ryan _loved_ him. Every inch of his skin was screaming and Ryan was so hot on him, his hands, fingers, and the way he kept at his pace was putting Shane in a practically manic state of incompletion. He was warm with the fragrance of those words, spoken so goddamn tenderly and earnestly. It hit like nails, hot gentle nails in his chest. Ryan loved him. It was all so worth it to blink through the moisture in his eyes and see Ryan sitting up a ways to look down at him, to press his fingers harder and the smile that tore open his mouth with awe every time he pressed a new sound out of Shane.

Shane came like that, looking up at the shadow in Ryan’s eyes, strung to bits and wrapped like tight wire around him. Ryan gripped him tight through it and Shane swallowed a dry swallow as he felt Ryan pushing his dick, now hard once again, into the give of his stomach, licking a trail of tacky precum warm between them until Shane was done, shivering and thighs shaking.

“God, I _really_ wanna fuck you,” Ryan whispered at him, still rocking his hips reflexively, a heated announcement at the tailend of a groan that cut through Shane, made a thrill tickle in his stomach.

“Yeah?” Shane replied articulately, out of breath.

“I’ve never fucked a guy,” Ryan said a little quietly; the first sign of insecurity in his voice since they’d begun. His gaze was lowered and he kept sneaking glances at Shane like he hadn’t just made Shane’s world come apart with his fingers.

Shane breathed out a gasping broken laugh. “Well, I imagine the logistics go the same especially—” Oh, he was blushing as he said it. This was ridiculous. He’d just let Ryan finger him until he came and he was fraught with schoolboy embarrassment at the thought of saying it. “—especially because I’m, you know, ready,” he stammered. “For you.”

He didn’t mean for it to sound so solemn, and Ryan grinned. Shane knew he’d hear about that later. “Is it OK if we try?”

Shane, frustrated with his own embarrassment and how nervous Ryan sounded like he could ever in any reality say no to that face, decided to say, “Just put your dick in me, dude.”

There was a long pause as Ryan’s curls swept his chest as they both curled up into wheezing laughter, a strangely warm sound in the dark of Ryan’s bedroom.

It felt a little ceremonious after that; the both of them silent as they gave this a try, perhaps both of them afraid to crack a joke and spook the other.

Shane had his eyes screwed shut when Ryan pressed him back onto his pillow as Shane felt him get to his knees. He felt a tight and punishing grip on his thighs when Ryan forced him to bend double, then slowly let himself slide in. The head of Ryan’s cock was so stupid thick and spread right through him. Ryan slowly twisted his hips deeper, smoothed a lick hot and wet up over something that made Shane’s jaw drop and a sound spill out of him that was high and desperate like a porn star, and he could swear he saw a light as fierce as triumph in Ryan’s stare as he leaned forward, and it made Shane laugh at him.

“Don’t fucking laugh, you big slut,” Ryan snickered lightly.

Shane skin went up like flash paper, a flush shimmering right through him. _Oh_. So that was new. Probably.

“You OK?” Ryan asked, clearly seeing something on Shane’s face change.

“Yeah!” Shane said too quickly. Maybe one day he’d tell him; see if it was a thing. Just not now. Not their _first time_ , dear _god_. “Doin’ great here!”

He could see the bright sheen of sweat in the light from the part in his curtains and Ryan’s exasperated smile. Ryan jerked himself inward and Shane went taut, sharply and terrifyingly aware that the angle was definitely wrong.

“Ouch!” he yelped.

“Oof nope, nope,” Ryan dropped Shane’s legs hard enough that his upper body could have bounced off the bed. “Sorry, sorry, did I hurt you—”

Shane’s lip stung but he kissed Ryan anyway, and they fell into it again, Ryan moving slowly back inside him on an easing thrust he couldn’t help and Shane tried to lift his knees against his chest, but then Ryan slipped out and the both of them broke off, panting like they’d run a marathon.

“Do you care if I turn you over?” Ryan whispered in ginger tones, gentle like he could be. “I think I could do this easier with you against the headboard.”

Shane licked his lips; he was gonna get hard again so fast it was embarrassing. “Yeah, let’s do it,” he replied in a heartier tone than he intended like Ryan was inviting him over for a barbecue.

Ryan did it too easily; so easily that Shane’s attempt to help was thwarted and he dropped his palms to the headboard to catch himself, suddenly aware that Ryan was hauling him over in one motion of his arms, pushing him into kneeling position.

Then it was like Ryan couldn’t wait any longer. He pulled Shane back by the hips, scooping under his thighs and spreading Shane’s legs wide, making him bend at the knees. His hips snapped up as Shane dropped on him and Ryan made a faint, relieved sound on that first deep thrust.

“God, Ryan,” Shane practically whined.

Shane writhed, practically skewered and squirming into the contact, legs spread over Ryan’s thighs. He gripped the headboard and bit himself quiet when there was no pause. Ryan moaned, teeth clenched to Shane’s spine as he started to fuck him. He curled both hands to Shane’s hips, threading a hot striping lick of his cock right in that spot mercilessly and rocking Shane down again and again into it.

“That feels—so good, you have no idea,” Ryan whispered almost reverently.

First words in a while and Shane could only nod, panting. He didn’t trust his own voice as he fucked himself on Ryan’s dick, the weight of his raised hips resting on Ryan’s one arm. Ryan still mouthed over his spine and wouldn’t stop, pulled him back as he spilled more lube over them, cool along the friction-hot skin of his rim. He felt Ryan’s wet fingers on his ass again, felt them push at his opening and smooth around where the sensitive brush of his cock was sliding in, spreading him so much more as he felt his whole body come to pieces.

Shane felt soaked then, and he exhaled like he just remembered how as the slick stretch—now rubbing a familiar friction lick on his dick from the inside—had him sobbing between desperate breaths.

Ryan had a crazy good leverage going, and a bad grip on the now raw tendons above his thighs, keeping Shane at a pace he liked, making Shane’s hips roll faster than he could on his own. Shane dropped into helpless shaking moans, feeling the burn shiver up his senses as Ryan rocked him on his dick. He could only hold on as it shook through him, Ryan keeping the angle and jerking him down against him over and over.

Then it punched out from his chest, harsh and too bright. Shane closed his eyes tight and moaned softly as he came all over himself, digging his nails into Ryan’s forearm as it tightened across his pelvis, crushing Shane back against his body for one delirious possessive moment, his breath rushing across Shane’s ear.

When they broke away once more, Ryan gasped out a dredging and vulnerable sound as he leaned his forehead briefly against the back of Shane’s neck, taking a faint airless pause.

“You really said you loved me,” Shane whispered so quietly, like he was talking to the headboard under his head. “I told you I wanted to kill one of your friends and you just…”

It was stupid how much easier it was to talk with Ryan’s dick in him, a blind and almost crass hope he’d be too distracted trying to fuck him to perceive that. Even better that they weren’t looking each other in the eye.

“What about it?” Ryan panted out in a laugh.

“Nothing,” Shane said, terrified to be so goddamn happy he bent his head against the wooden headboard again.

He breathed long and deep, pained by how the words were stoppered up in him because nothing he could say would sound right. Supplications or announcements. Empty; nothing like the warmth coming out of Ryan. Ryan pulled him back, his arms coming around him like a vice for a constricted moment; a purposeful hug before he started to jam his hips up against Shane.

They were one helpless form and it was friction like salt and battery acid shaking in his veins. Ryan started to move faster, shuddering into him on the rhythm of his breath. Shane thrust back like it was reflex, making a soft surprised noise when Ryan was ready to meet him, and he saw odd lines on the edges of his vision.

“Oh fuck, do that again,” Ryan begged.

Shane dropped his head on his fist and rocked his ass back against Ryan, whole body tensing at the dig of Ryan’s fingers pulling him back so he fell palms flat to the mattress, ass up. He felt the rake of the sheets on his knees as Ryan hauled him back with an easy strength and slammed against him quicker and quicker. He fucked harsher than he did anything else and it put Shane in a delicious state of mental stasis as the angle had him trembling. Each hit was a new source of delicious agony, beating something tender in him without mercy and Shane bit the edge of his tongue as he felt the burn become a bloom of seeping pleasure, oversensitivity shrieking up his nerves. It rushed up on him and he needed it faster. He thought he sobbed it out, begging Ryan to squeeze it out of him.

When Ryan came, he said it softly, “Shane.” Vulnerable, almost frightened by the impact of it, he shuddered inside him, fucking him through the end until everything in Shane went abruptly hot. Ryan choked out a blown out gasp and his body tensed before the snap of his hips slowed to a disjointed, but more intense rhythm and he fisted the sheets by Shane’s wrist when he bottomed out, snapped his hips in once more, eclipsing Shane’s grunts with a harsh growl of his own. The angle pushed him right on a perfect spot in him and Shane was breaking open from the middle where even the contact of Ryan’s chest was like raking heaven.

He shuddered through it in rolls of his hips that savoured as he began to whisper faint, crooning things while Shane tried to keep his breath, shivering in aftershocks and burning muscles that were already giving out.

Finally, after a tense and shaking second, Shane fell, arms completely jelly and he took Ryan with him as Ryan melted over him with a fully blissed out sigh. He ran still hot hands over Shane’s skin while their breathing slowed. Shane could feel Ryan’s euphoric smile spread against skin.

|*|

He wasn’t sure when he passed out. Just that at some juncture in the seep of morning across the stretch of them tangled together, Ryan chuckled a splash of hot breath against his cheek. “Shane, you _gotta_ wash the blood outta your hair, buddy.”

It’s as if the dream was sitting on its heels at the end of the bed, waiting for his consciousness to drop its guard before it sprung. He went out like a snuffed candle, aware of Ryan’s words but not sure what they meant.

He felt the twist of rocks on the balls of his feet when he began to fight the desire to run, fear lacing the breaths he couldn’t take. He peered into the alleyway once more; now so familiar to him, Shane had built a mind room for it, aware in so many ways that he’d be irrationally surprised if he went back and it didn’t look exactly like this.

Shane became frightfully aware of the walls getting narrower and in the silence, he could hear things shift. He heard the screams of the white alder roots under the dirt and a strange rattle of metal on metal like the black sweeping bougainvillea were creeping closer, and the stretch of wooden beams as if he were on an old floating ship. As it got all the more darker, Shane could feel other things, other living things near him, slipping up the walls on either side or peering between rafters that looked grey in the half-dark.

Shane felt a shadow cross ahead of him, crawling low and he nearly jumped back before he realised he was looking at it through glass. There were windows at the end of the alley. A long stretch of eight windows as the creature slithered across on its forearms, black wooden fingers curved like a crocodile shuffling and twisting and for a moment it looked like several parallels; eight different versions of it crossing the same window.

The same mirrors.

He watched it angle itself so the cavernous holes of its eyes looked right at Shane in the reflection, leaning slowly nearer and it was so obviously reflected that for an odd, frantic moment Shane wondered why he thought they were windows in the first place. Everything he could take in about the alley in that rigid tangible dark was there in its reflection from the dirt ground, the city in the background, and the roots breaking the earth, now calm as the creature, reflected brightest with its oily grey skin and empty eyes coiled itself closer to Shane.

Closer and closer except that where Shane would have been standing, there was simply nothing. He stepped further in, drawing close to the glass and felt an instantaneous swoop of nausea at the sight of the monster’s eyes, wet empty holes wide as its gash of a mouth opened in a pained cry of horror.

He might have tossed himself out of the bed, sat up in a deranged effort to look at himself properly, feel for where his face should be, but instead his hand closed on the tightly drawn muscle of Ryan’s back and he opened his eyes to a tawny gaze looking at him like he’d been caught staring. Ryan's whole naked self was resting on him, arms folded under his chin; a comforting, quieting weight.

Ryan’s smile looked like sunrise on a battlefield as his eyes searched Shane’s, excited to be there, warm in the idea that this was their first time waking up like this. “You were dreaming,” he murmured.

Shane reached up and rubbed the back of his fist over his eyes. “I was,” he replied.

“About me?”

Shane smiled begrudgingly. “If I say yes, will you make me a coffee?”

Ryan’s eyebrows dropped and his smile changed. “Nah, didn’t like the face you were making. Actually better _not_ have been dreaming about me, dip shit.”

“You’re really just gonna lie on me and call me names…”

“All day if I have to.”

Shane made an attempt to stretch and sweep his palms down Ryan’s shoulder blades. The dream was already half out of his head. “Didn’t you say Steven scheduled an eight-thirty? That gives us like fifteen minutes to be ready and out the door.”

Ryan shifted his arms out of the way, and Shane savoured the feeling pushing under his fingers and palms; how Ryan felt warm with sleep on his naked skin. “Let’s just skip it. I want the morning with you.”

Shane felt like the universe was in his throat for that one, spelling out the history of the masses, specks compared to Ryan leaning down and brushing his nose over his clavicle, scratching Shane’s chest with his scruff as he nuzzled him. Shane was so abruptly overwhelmed with the full landscape of what having Ryan here like this meant to him, he had to quiet his mind quickly. He had to shove the memory of the time he read the Iliad—with the thought of a love decent enough he’d want the rest of their world to disappear so it would be just him and them—into the bottom of a bucket of promises and expectations being _really_ actually in love with someone had filled.

“I feel like I remember you telling me to wash the blood out of my hair while I was half asleep,” he murmured, practically clamouring for a new subject.

Ryan shook them both with his laugh. “I got up to grab your murder kit of a messenger bag and came back in here to cuddle. I fucking thought it was mousse or something. Imagine the horror when my fingers came away pink.”

Shane wrinkled his nose. Horrific. “Well, let me shower so you can get that coffee you promised me—”

“Uh, excuse me?” Ryan scoffed delightedly. “You got cum all over my sheets and headboard. So I gotta do laundry _and_ wait on you? I don’t think—”

That did remind Shane of the nasty mess waiting to spill out of him the moment he stands up and he groaned. “Deal. I shower; we’ll work out the rest.”

Ryan leaned up and kissed him on the tip of his nose, then his mouth before rolling off him. There was something awakening to witness what Ryan was like in moments like this, a side of him Shane hadn’t been privy to, the affection so openly physical and unapologetic. Shane had never been more excited to learn a new avenue of Ryan’s language since he found out he’d watched the film _Tombstone_ and could quote every Val Kilmer line.

|*|

When he got out of the shower, it was chilly and Ryan didn’t really have anything in his size lying around except his oversized white t-shirt with his childhood art on it and a pair of sweats that Shane pulled up to his calf. So even dressed after a hot shower, he was still shivering, and the longer he sat in the aftermath of all of it, the more he kept thinking of his nightmares.

He could hear Ryan in the kitchen; the slam of the washer lid and click of it being switched on. He also heard voices. He had kind of wondered vaguely the night before where Ryan’s roommates had been, but as he pulled up Ryan’s charger to plug his phone in, he heard Roland’s obnoxious guffaw.

As a measure, he threw Ryan’s duvet around his shoulders and sat on the bed, checking his phone. His feed was pouring over with news and coverage about Bezos’ murder, and some less-than interesting takes about it. He could smell Ryan making coffee. Shane smiled and hugged the duvet closer as he swung his legs off the bed. He didn’t want to sit in the kitchen while Ryan’s roommates messed around and talked too loud for nine A.M., but he wanted his coffee and he wanted Ryan.

He compromised, shuffling out of Ryan’s bedroom wrapped in the blanket. Ryan was indeed standing in front of the coffee maker, pouring out a cup when Shane drew into the warmer kitchen. Both of Ryan’s roommates were home; Danny blinking up at him from the armchair in a wordless surprise and Roland sitting too comfortably, too closely to Ryan at the kitchen island watching him with a soppiness Shane wanted to kick out of him.

Shane didn’t do that. He crossed the kitchen and came around the island, smiling when Ryan turned and offered the coffee with a shy little smirk.

Shane shrouded him, lifting the blanket up with his arms so it encased Ryan. Ryan leaned back with a tiny laugh, smelling like laundry soap, salty from dried sweat and warm; so warm. He kissed him, pressed Ryan’s lips open and soaked up the way Ryan’s body felt through the thin cloth of the sweats and t-shirt. Ryan’s laugh bubbled off into a satisfied, eyes closed sigh when Shane pulled back, accepting the coffee in cupped hands.

“I love you,” Shane said to him, aloud; absolutely eating the sink of Roland’s shoulders in his periphery, making a full meal of Ryan’s bemused, but charmed stare.

Shane shuffled back into Ryan’s bedroom, blowing on the rim of the coffee softly as he withdrew, maybe to nap again, hopefully to wake up to Ryan again; a chance to ply him with new touches in the lull of Saturday.

The concept kind of wavered when Shane got back into the bedroom and saw his phone blinking. Probably Katie with a polite remonstrance about his skipping another Steven meeting, which would make him feel guilty and he’d probably try to do some work on his Saturday to make up for it. Being self-employed was shit when you had a moral compass, he supposed.

It wasn’t a message from Katie. It wasn’t one from anyone he knew at all. The number was blocked and when Shane opened it; it was an audio file.

He’d know it anywhere. Ryan’s voice spilling out aloud in Shane’s silence, tinny and echoey under the white noise of the recorder. “... _I was gonna keep you out of it, leave the room, follow and kill Resnick then come back to you…”_

His stomach dropped, cold as stone when the little play icon went grey. The duvet hit the floor as Shane stared blankly at his phone. That _was_ Ryan. A recording of him in the bathroom yesterday.

“ _...do you think I put the gun in your hand because I couldn’t do it myself? I wanted you to kill someone—wanted to see you do it because I felt_ …”

How had this happened? Who had gotten a hold of this to send to him? He twisted on his heel when Ryan’s bedroom door opened. It was Ryan, holding his phone. He looked at Shane, then Shane’s phone as he switched off his airpods, removing them to tap something on his screen.

_“Ryan, the way killing that man made me feel—”_

_“Oh, I know. I felt that and I know...”_

Shane’s fear was plastered in perfect parallel on Ryan’s expression. “It came with a photo,” he whispered, shutting the door behind him. “Your photo of the body from last night complete with your caption.” He turned his phone around for Shane to look.

Yep. There it was. The jelly beans scattered over Bezos’ body, the clean cut of his neck exposed to the flash of Shane’s camera and not far off, the head staring in scrunched-face agony at its own reflection in the master bedroom’s closet. Shane’s jaw clenched.

“So someone knows,” Shane began slowly and Ryan sat down on the edge of his bed, took a deep breath. He looked pale. “Someone who wants us to know they know.”

Shane felt it; a fractured sense that the room was no longer cold.

“OK, OK. If they want us to know they know like this; they haven’t turned us in yet,” Ryan breathed, and Shane could see in his eyes the way his brain was starting to whir. “They want something from us.”

They both jumped when Ryan’s notification went off again. He looked at Shane for a faint second, protracted in a moment of meaning to speak and then deciding against it as he looked down at his phone.

Ryan looked back up at him again, this time his eyes were wide with a forming idea. “It’s a text. Just says. ‘ _Hollywood & Highland. Tonight After 8. Both of you come alone_.’ They wanna _talk_ , Shane.”

Shane’s whole face felt numb. “Why is that a good thing?”

“Oh come on, we’ve seen this time and time again in movies.” Ryan put his phone to sleep and set it down beside himself. “Because blackmail means the person thinks our secret is more valuable as a secret, so maybe we can negotiate.”

Shane folded his arms, to scratch at his own arm reflexively. “Maybe we can...make it go away.”

Ryan looked up at him at that, reading something very poignant on Shane’s face as he shrugged half-heartedly. “What if it’s someone we know?” he prompted.

Shane didn’t say anything. He didn’t want Ryan to know he didn’t care.

|*|

They didn’t talk about it much throughout the day; it felt like Ryan also just wanted to live in a tight bubble that was just the two of them in the aftermath of what they’d become together. No considerations for what they were going to have to do tonight or the anxiety of not knowing what was coming.

By four p.m, Ryan’s roommates had both long been at work; he had settled down some, wrapped around him—hot weight and wiry muscles—covered in blankets, halted breaths shaking out of him restlessly. He kept touching Shane like he was sinking into him to hide from the world, knowing all they could do was wait.

They had switched off the news, swimming with different angles of Bezos’ yacht and the suspects being his guests that night who allegedly hadn’t found him until well into the next day.

“There were seven people at that party and not one of them gave a fuck that he never came back,” Shane said musingly.

 _The Dark Knight_ on the screen played on and Ryan made a sound between a hum and a chuckle, drew near Shane in their breathy silence like something deadly, and hungry. His thumb stroked over the head of Shane’s dick, slowly and so gently that Shane wondered if Ryan lost his train of thought. The room felt different somehow, fuller, smaller, hotter.

Ryan’s eyes looked haunted, wet with a strange purpose even as Shane kissing him made him smile.

“Hey,” was the only thing Shane said about it the whole day. “I can hear you thinking in there; we’re gonna get through this one.”

“Mm,” Ryan hummed pensively.

Then he proceeded to slide down under the blankets so he could put Shane’s whole dick down his throat. Shane let out a low sound when Ryan sucked the head into his mouth; his fingers tangled into Ryan's hair, pulling him down so that he could still fit entirely in the cradle of his jaw as Ryan sucked him hard. Ryan was a natural and Shane despaired a little because he was already in mourning. Nothing was going to happen to them; not if he could help it. Ryan distracted him when he moaned low in his throat, just enough vibration that Shane could feel it all the way down to his toes.

Shane was devastated to be so fucking happy he was simply going to have to kill whatever wanted to take it.

|*|

It was when Ryan smoothly pulled into the top floor parkade of Hollywood & Highland, and steered into a slot on the edge of the roof that Shane looked at him. Something about the isolation of their looking out at the city and the empty stretches of cars behind them made him feel a little more at ease. Ryan didn’t voice what was inside him until he put the car in park and the heater hummed in their silence.

“Shane, if this goes badly—”

“If you say one word about you dying or your death or being arrested, I’m going to tie you up and put you in your own trunk,” Shane said haplessly, hoping it sounded more joking than he meant it.

“Good luck with that,” Ryan scoffed, almost a return to his usual tone. He shifted to turn and look at Shane, top of his cheeks slightly pink, eyes narrowed and cool. “You know I’m just scared.”

Shane was just angry; his adrenaline was burning again. He knew better than to say anything. The guy brought something out in Shane that was beginning to make him sick in the head. Whoever was waiting for them here was just going to have to die tonight, and maybe that might fuck it up for them, the company and all their big plans, but Shane felt like there had to be some universal equanimity to killing a bunch of greedy sociopaths and the two of them fitting together so perfectly it hurt sometimes.

“Ryan,” he said, and Ryan smiled, bright teeth fiery with decadent affection. “Come here, would you…please?”

Shane wanted to be OK and it killed him because he wanted _them_ to be OK, and Ryan pressed his lips to Shane’s forehead and he maybe wanted to tell him right then because he could at the very least pretend he was as decent as Ryan; that he wasn’t boiling with resolve; a rolled up garotte wire and a knife in his pocket. He shut his eyes as Ryan’s hot, mint breath settled on his jaw, brushed up to his lips and they didn't really kiss, just spent this quiet, quick moment before the end, close and swimming in nerves, breathing in each other, lips against skin.

“I keep having these nightmares where I’m becoming this monster,” he confessed quickly, exhaling out the words in a rush before he could change his mind. “And I think it might be because I know that even though you asked me to go in on this thing with you; it’s something I really wanted all along, and maybe I want it more than you do.”

Ryan paused, his thumb touched along Shane’s Adam’s Apple, before he twisted away and shook his head, looking at the ceiling of the car like it had the answer to whatever Shane had said that was calling his patience into account. Shane knew it was only fitting that in the end, Ryan would pull away from him; would learn that Shane wasn’t on par with Ryan’s image of him in the world he saw as rotten and evil.

“You make me _so_ mad sometimes,” Ryan was saying as he stretched out in his seat to dig in his coat pocket where he withdrew the Resnick gun complete with silencer. “So you’re OK if I go out there and shoot the son of a bitch that’s threatening us?”

Shane stared at him. “Well…” he spluttered. “Yeah? I was actually gonna...”

Ryan was still shaking his head, pulling the magazine free to examine the bullet count before pushing it back in and cocking it. “God, if you had just _said_ so this morning; we could have coordinated this smoother—”

Shane was mildly offended. “How was I supposed to know you were cool with killing the blackmailer? What if I’d scared you off?”

“I sat through three years of your dumb cartoon about hot dogs; you can’t scare me off.” Ryan unlocked the doors and stepped out before casting one last baleful glance at Shane when he got out and their eyes met over the roof of the car. “I love you,” he said churlishly .

Shane glared at him, but mostly because he felt like an idiot. “Love you, too.”

“ _Wowwww._ You guys _drove_ here? You know there’s cameras that capture your plates, right?”

Shane looked around, convinced he was losing it. The very familiar voice had come from behind them. He whipped around just as Ryan slammed his car door and exclaimed, “What the _fuck_?”

He followed Ryan’s line of sight as it dipped into the shadows where the generator lights didn’t reach. It was like spying a bird in the leaves; he squinted. He spotted the blond hair first and it was only as the figure shifted from his perch on the raised vent where he was leaning.

“Steven?!” he exclaimed.

Steven jumped up from his leaning position in something like outrage as he waved his arms sporadically. Shane couldn’t see his expression from this distance, but he could picture it very well. “ _Don't_ say my name aloud out here! Unlike _you two_ , I don’t just wave my personal information around for anyone to grab, _and_ if I started murdering billionaires, I _wouldn’t_ post it on the cloud!”

Shane looked over at Ryan who exchanged the same look with him. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was a little relieved when Ryan made the motion like he was tucking the gun away.

“That was a password-locked cloud,” he announced.

“Whatever, I got the password off your computers months ago when I found out you two were sharing files on it for work that your company _needed_. You... _fucking—_ ” he said the word with all the parameters of hesitation a rehearsed insult like that could capacitate. “— _idiots_.”

It stung. Ryan started laughing, which made it worse.

Steven held up his phone. “Then of course, you talk about murder in the office bathroom, on company time, where anyone can just stand by the door and hear every word. And what’s with the jelly beans?”

Ryan sobered as he walked around the car to get closer. Shane followed. “The first time was an accident; even a self-defense case would ruin us. We just—we got carried away. It was like _Batman Begins_.”

Shane coughed. “Well, technically at first it was like _Boondock Saints_ since the first time was an accident— _”_

Ryan grimaced and looked over at him. “The first kill in _Boondock Saints_ wasn’t an accident. The older brother threw a toilet off a roof straight for the Russian Mafia guy. Remember the ballistics line?”

Shane squinted. God it had been so long since he’d watched it; maybe he was thinking about the sequel. “Maybe that was _Death Wish_ —“

“I haven’t seen any of your stupid movies!” Steven yelled; he stepped out of the shadow looking furious.

Ryan couldn’t even do him the courtesy of being serious; he snorted instead until he was wheezing. “OK, OK, Stevie; what’s your angle? You gonna turn us in?”

Steven stuffed his hands deeper in his high-collared, large, black peacoat pockets. “What? No, if you two get arrested, the company tanks. I figured I just needed some kind of leverage. This is more like my doomsday device.”

Shane watched Ryan cock his head curiously; the tension between them spiked. “Leverage, huh?” he echoed, low and dangerous.

Shane was suddenly very much afraid for the both of them. “Leverage for what?” he piped up. “What do you want?”

There was a flush that rose up Steven’s neck as he blinked a little furiously up at the generator lights, fidgeting in place as he leaned his body weight forward. “I want,” he sighed pensively. “I want you two to show up for my meetings. I want you to _participate_ ; I want you to get _organised…_ ”

Ryan’s shoulders sagged. “That’s it?!”

Shane took a few steps toward the shadows where Steven stood, looking mulish and embarrassed. “Hey, man. We’re gonna do better, OK? You don’t have to—”

“And I want in.”

Somewhere in the parkade someone’s car alarm had gone off. Shane blinked, trying to make sure he had heard right. Ryan huffed out an incredulous laugh.

Steven dug in his pockets and pulled out a folded up piece of paper. “I had to make my chart analog because I’m not the kind of idiot that just posts stuff like that on a hard drive that can be traced. See, I looked it up and Elon Musk is going to be in San Francisco at the end of December. We have the budget to purchase twenty-thousand marketing PSYOPS who can start distributing—” He opened up the page like it was a newspaper as he drew closer, finally stepping completely out of the shadows to lay a map-sized chart on the ground at their feet.

He was energetic about it, smoothing out the edges of his large page. “—distributing false ads and engagement for an event to be granted investment into a rival space program which we can claim is backed by some guys from Saudi Arabia. We’ll attract him and a bunch of his friends to a location—I was thinking of this warehouse in Chinatown that used to make ammonia cleaner; it’s perfect and we have immediate access to cleaning resources. You guys can handle the killing details, but that’s how we’ll clean out at least a third of the money-hoarding tech population of California in one swoop!”

He slapped the page where there was a drawing of a crowd of stick men in monocles and top hats with the speech bubble saying, “ _Don’t kill us oh no_!”

“No trace,” Steven continued. “Just an event rented out by an off-shore company which we can also use as a tax front so we can save enough to invest in clean energy for small towns all along the coast; our revenue returns for that alone will buy us a bigger office right off the bat. Now of course, people are already starting to notice billionaires are dropping like flies so security is going to go up, but that’s our second investment…”

Ryan sighed loudly as he stooped low to the ground to look at Steven’s chart; he shot a glance at Shane. “Well, you can never go wrong if you’ve got a numbers guy, right?”

Shane laughed and laughed even harder when Steven started to talk animatedly about work-out regimens and Krav Maga classes.

|*|

“Well, you gotta do as he says now,” Shane sighed the moment he closed his door. “He’s our M.”

“So we’ll get him to kill someone at least once,” Ryan murmured at him, checking the rearview to make sure Steven was occupied packing up his oversized chart. They were going to go get burgers and ice cream to celebrate their new venture together, but Steven had parked three blocks away as a precautionary measure. “He’s got an addictive personality so it’ll be like clockwork. We’ll get our leverage back.”

Shane buckled his seatbelt, smiling as Ryan looked at him expectantly. “Sure. And if it all goes to shit, we flee the country together.”

For some reason he thought about Mexico City three years ago. The moment they’d landed and how Ryan had gone looking for a place to eat once they hit the city proper. The way the sun had looked on him even back then, like it loved him deeply, every streak and gleam of gold on his skin. How Shane had felt nothing but absolute resolve in his veins for the relief it gave him to follow Ryan into the deep dive bars with their dusty neon lights.

“I’m thinking about Mexico,” he said to current Ryan, whose amber droplet eyes were ablaze with the glow of the city around them. “What do you think?”

Ryan leaned on his horn just to piss Steven off, grinning at Shane. “I go where you go,” he said simply.

**Author's Note:**

> eat the rich, ya know?


End file.
